Year One: An Eagle's Beginning
by Whispering to the Winds
Summary: It's 1971, the beginning of the Dark Lord's first rise, and little Elisabeth is set to begin her first year of Hogwarts. Attacks on wizards and muggles have begun and Diagon Alley is starting to feel the doom of the war. Is this dark wizard another Grindewald? What will Hogwarts be like for a shopkeep girl? Marauder Era.
1. Chapter 1

**Year One: 1971**

 **Chapter One: Alley Kids**

"Ah-choo!"

Wiping her nose, eleven year old Elisabeth Ollivander sighed. The dust bunnies were running rampant over Ollivander's: Makers of Fine Wands Since 382 B.C. and causing her to sneeze repeatedly. In fives.

 _Why fives?_ she wondered before returning to the Daily Prophet sitting in her lap.

It proclaimed in large letters across the front " _A GROWING THREAT: A NEW DARK WIZARD_ ". Just under, it showed a picture of a sleepy Muggle town where apparently Millicent Bagnold, the current Minister of Magic, had a squib cousin. Elisabeth grimaced and thought, _Awfully bold of that man. Attacking the Minister's cousin? He's made an enemy of the Ministry today._

Leaning her moon-pale eyes even closer to the tiny print, she read the words of the story. Then the next one. Then the next. Shoving her floating black hair away from her face, she dived into news article on a new species of kelpie that had been discovered in the Dead Sea, a body of water so salty that few creatures could live in it. They were muddy brown in color, had long stringy appendages, and were rather bizarre looking if the artist's rendition next to the article was true. _How fascinating!_

Turing to page 4, section diagonal read from the direction upside down to continue reading the report, she quickly got absorbed. She ignored the need to sneeze and pushed more of her elbow length hair over her shoulders. With all her focus on the newspaper, she could disregard the chaos that surrounded her. Still perusing the articles, Elisabeth jerked in surprise when she someone called her name from the main area of the shop. Her sudden movement disrupted the grime on the floor, spinning it into fanciful whirlwinds. She sneezed.

"Ah-ah-ah-ahchoooo! Ahchoo! Ahchoo! Ahchoo! Ahchoo!"

Tucking the paper into a crevice between two wand boxes, she stood up and stretched out her back before walking down the aisle to the voice that called her name. Tall shelves lined the walls and made rows through the shop, an attempt to create a semblance of order. The ancient floor was a contrast of brightly colored boxes and wheeling dust bunnies, catching light from the two cobwebby windows opening out to the rest of the Alley and the occasional gas lit lamps floating in the air.

As she wandered down the row to the voice's owner, she wondered aloud, "Five. Always in groupings of five. Why would that be? What is significant for the number of five in sneeze patterns? I don't understand-"

Sixteen year old Florean Fortesque interrupted her from the front of shop. "I think it has less to do with the number itself and more to do with the amount of dust in the shop. When was the last time Ollivander cleaned in here?"

As she turned the corner, she saw the mess directly in front of the door; somewhere in there lay a single counter and an ancient register. Florean stood in the middle of the floor with her trunk. _I don't remember leaving that there. I could've sworn it was in my room upstairs…_ She thought, then frowned in concentration. _No, I dragged it down here… Why..?_

"Florean? Is that you? I didn't think that you were showing me around the Alley again today. There is something important about today, but I don't quite remember…" The tiny girl looked up at Florean as she popped out from between two stacks of empty wand boxes. Catching her toe, she started to fall forward, catching herself on one of the stacks. It teetered over her head, threatening to dump its upper boxes onto her head. Florean eyed the towers next to her and gestured to her to come out from under them.

"It's September 1st today."

Comprehension dawned in her pale eyes. A frown set over her thin features as she walked over to him, saying dully, "Hogwarts."

"Come on, Elisabeth. You will love it there. It's much cooler than the Alley." He poked her side.

Refusing to giggle, she rubbed her toe into the ground, creating a dusty _ploom_. "I…. I'm…" She paused, then said quietly, "I've barely been here for three months; I don't want to leave again."

He knelt down to her level. "You will be back here soon, silly. Besides, the Hogwarts Library is far superior to Flourish and Blotts. I've only told you about it a million times. So many more books." A merchant's son at heart, he added, "You don't even have to pay for them."

A smile slipped onto her face. "Yeah…"

"Really, you'll love it Elisabeth. And you can use magic there with that new wand Ollivander created just for you."

At the mention of her new master, Elizabeth's mood dropped again. "What if he finds he likes living without me? What if he likes not having to worry about a child?"

An opening door causing a cascade of falling boxes interrupted the teenage boy's reassurances to the contrary. Gerrick Ollivander, already mostly white haired and as thin as a rail, wedged the door to the back room a bit wider before slipping into the shop. "Florean Fortesque? A wand of chestnut from the Appalachians Mountains of the United States of America and the heartstring of a particularly ancient Swedish Shortsnout, if I remember correctly. What are you doing with my apprentice today?"

"You asked me to grab her on my way to the Hogwarts Express, sir." Rolling his eyes, Florean continued, "Elisabeth doesn't want to go."

Both man and boy watched as she shrunk down on herself, staring another dust _ploom_ she'd set adrift on the shop floor. She mumbled unintelligibly under her breath. "No, it's just…. I'd rather…You see, Hogwarts, I'm not sure-"

Ollivander barked a hoarse laugh, then crossed the room to stand next to both children. "Well, she's got to go. I can't teach her to manage the magic of wand components until she can at least manage her own magic. I haven't had a viable apprentice since the forties when Elizabeth's Uncle Thomas showed aptitude. Chose Quidditch over wands, the crazy man…"

Elisabeth had to think to remember Uncle Thomas. _I think he used to give me iced lollies when he came around. My brothers loved him- No, don't think of them. Not today. Not when I'm leaving- No. Don't think about that. Because if you think about that, then you'll remember_ them _. . .The screams, the noise… Not that. Think of… Master Ollivander!_ The dark thought, it seemed could only be shifted in a new direction. _But what if he finds he likes not having me around; where'll I go next? No one to take me in- No, don't think of it. Circular reasoning will get me nowhere. Think of… of iced lollies._

… _Well, that just started this whole train of thought all over again._

Uncertainty forced the words out of her mouth, tumbling out in a torrent of staccato sounds. "You'll let me come back here? You won't decide you like the quiet the shop had before I arrived? You will-"

"That's why you didn't want to go?" the master wandmaker chuckled and rubbed the girl's head. Kindly he sank down to her eye level, more than a foot shorter than his tall and sickly thin frame. "You always have a place here. It's rather nice having another person in this shop. Gives it some life, I'd say. Life, yes… Say, is that the Gregorovitch creation that idiot March wants me to repair?" He snagged the offending wand off the floor a foot away and lifted it to his eyes. With a sudden passionate fury, he stabbed the wand at a shelf. The wand dribbled a sickly yellow spark. "See this, girl? This is a mixture of niffler fur and young vine. Inferior ingredients for a wand; the niffler doesn't have almost any magic of its own and none of its magic is even stored in the fur. And the vine, it practically weeps sap it is so immature! 'Not working properly-' Of COURSE it won't work properly! It barely has a spark of magic. Why she wants it fixed, not a clue. She's an aspen girl, she is. Perhaps with a dragon heartstring of some sort- No! Maple!"

Ollivander continued his rambling lecture, staring so intently at the wand and its imperfections he didn't see the fascinated smile break across his apprentice's face. Shoving her mass of floating hair behind her, she leaned in closer to the wand and started asking questions to her master.

"Aspen? But why aspen?"

"No, not aspen, you silly girl! Maple, I said maple. Far too ambitious for anything else. And outdoorsy." He nodded at himself, then absentmindedly twirled the wand around a finger. "Definitely dragon heartstring."

"I remember. You said that those cores were for temperamental people because they had their own attitude! Or wait… Was that the kelpie hair one?"

He stopped twirling the wand to shake it in her face. "No! We are Ollivanders! We don't use materials such as _kelpie hair_. No, I spoke of dra- Ah!" He brought and wand closer to his face and grabbed both ends before bending it to test its flexibility. "See, no flexing. So unyielding!"

"Flexible wands are for adaptable people." Elisabeth whispered to herself, trying to remember. She quieted when the third person in the room laid his hand on her head.

"I am sorry, Master Ollivander, but the train will be leaving without us at this rate. We," Florean gestured at Elisabeth and himself before continuing, "Also have to stop at my parent's ice cream parlor to grab my trunk before we Floo from Tom's to the Express."

Ollivander looked at him sharply for a moment and blinked in surprise, clearly forgetting the presence of another person in the shop, before abruptly standing up. "Alright then. Safe journey." With a pat of his apprentice's shoulder, his glance returned to the wand in his hands. A muttered, "Shoddy creation," were the last words heard from Gerrick Ollivander as he deftly avoided the chaos of the shop and slid back into the adjoining room while staring at the blunted stick. It was clear from the attention refocused on the wand that the two still in the shop had already been forgotten.

"Damn," Florean breathed.

Elisabeth looked at him in curiosity.

"I'd forgotten how easily distracted he is." With a shake of his head, he grabbed the handle of the girl's trunk. "Let's go, shall we?"

She nodded slowly. Following him out the door, she looked back. _I'll be back. I will._

 _I hope._

 **Y1C1-Y1C1-Y1C1**

Following Florean Fortescue XXI out the door, Elisabeth Ollivander barely noticed the hectic activity of Diagon Alley.

The boy had been her guide for the last three months. When she'd first arrived in Leaky Caldron's fireplace amidst green flames, Florean had been the one to catch her as she tumbled out. He had introduced himself before asking her name, only to have her burst into sobs. Between her tears and whispered words, he had picked up her ratty old trunk, the same one he currently dragged along, and grabbed her hand. A free ice cream had been snagged from his parents, stopping the tears and leaving just the sniffles, and a kind ear had listened to the story that fallen from a quivering mouth. It had taken quite awhile for calm to come to her moon-pale Ollivander eyes.

The sixteen year old had walked her over to Ollivander's shop and, in quiet words, given the wand maker a sketch of the girl's background. Though the older man had been expecting Elisabeth since she proved her viability as his apprentice in the family trade at age six, he hadn't expected the rest of the story that followed. When Florean had seen how the bachelor had no idea how to deal with an upset child, he offered to show Elisabeth around Diagon Alley and then introduced her to her new world.

With Florean as her companion, the other kids of the Alley had taken to her, accepting her curiosity and subsequent forgetfulness with a minimum of ribbing. They did tease her about her clumsiness; she had an inability to walk more than few steps without tripping on a pebble, a doorframe, or a stray breeze of air.

Perhaps their favorite example was when she had fallen sideways while standing still with no one around. Though her very pale skin turned a tomato red and she had hid behind her masses of black hair, fourth year Hufflepuffs Marissa Malkin of Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions and Taris Golken of Golken's Fine Watches and Timepieces had picked her up and brushed her off. They had grinned at her and Taris swung an arm over her much shorter shoulder, saying, "You're a klutz, kid."

"But she's our klutz," Marissa tickled Elisabeth's side, surprising a giggle out of the tiny girl.

Florean had looked on and watched over her as the Alley's kids started to accept her over the course of the summer. Though none were her age, there were a few a year older, like second year Ravenclaw Zacharias O'Toole from the Apothecary, and some two or three years her junior, like Amie Smith of the Second Hand Robes Shop. Florean, Elisabeth had noted, was not very close with any of the Alley's kids either; but all of them liked him for at least his access to free ice cream, if not his big smile and willingness to listen to anyone's problems. He liked to be everyone's friend.

She could see that now as the pair got closer to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. Ignoring the other Hogwarts-age Diagon Alley kids impatiently waiting in front, Elisabeth admired the bright, clean shop, so different that her family's store. The ice creamery had been in Florean's family since the opening of the Alley in the 1500s, and though their specialty and half their store name had changed from pastas to desserts to mainly ice cream, the eldest Fortescue, male or female, was named Florean so the shop's deed stayed in family hands. This teenager happened to be the twenty first generation with that name.

"Took you long enough," grumbled Erik Potage of Potage's Cauldrons, a seventh year Ravenclaw. "What did you have to do, battle with Doxies to grab her?"

Smothering a chuckle from beside her, Florean grinned good-naturedly. "Could have. Have you seen Ollivander's recently? Anyways, you could've just gone ahead, Erik."

"No he couldn't 've," Came the sharp response. A stout woman bustled out of the shop, levitating a worn trunk behind her. Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed Florean on his forehead and dropped his trunk in front of him. His mother continued, "It's not safe, not with that dark wizard and his followers attacking randomly. Safety in numbers, especially for you younger children." She waved a finger in Elisabeth's direction.

Several kids frowned and a few others rolled their eyes. Two looked worried, but Marissa Malkin scoffed at Mrs Fortescue. "They only ever attack Muggles in small towns. This is Diagon Alley, the center of British Wizarding Commerce. What could they have to gain from attacking here?"

Shaking her head at the folly of the younger generation, the older woman pursed her lips, muttering "Could be another Grindlewald."

Florean gave his mom a comforting hug, disregarding her mutterings. "We'll stick together, don't worry Mom. We're Diagon Alley kids."

Glancing at one of her many watches lining both arms, Taris Golken grabbed her trunk and poked Florean. "Sorry Mrs F," she grinned in excitement. "But we have to get to the train. See you at Christmas!"

Waving their goodbyes, the eleven children each took their trunk and tromped off to the Alley's entrance to Muggle London, the Leaky Cauldron. Huffing under the weight of her trunk, Elisabeth turned to Florean, curious. "Why are we using Tom's Floo? Doesn't it make more sense to just use the ones in our own homes?"

He paused for a moment, then took her trunk for her. She gave him a grateful grin as he grimaced, tugging it along once again. "Oof. Packing weights to beef up your tiny muscles?"

"Books," she muttered, pale cheeks blushing.

"Makes sense." As they caught up to the others after lagging for a moment, he answered her question. "It's the trunks actually. Because all of us live in the housing above or attached to our shops, most of us don't have very large fireplaces." He grinned. "I mean, you can use a charm to increase the space of a room, but with the magic used for flooing, your fireplace should probably be a bit more… Stable. Mum used to tell me some stories about people expanding their fireplaces only to have it backfire on them."

She nodded in understanding as he continued, "Anyways, the one in the Leaky Cauldron is pretty big because of the inn that is part of the bar. Traffic with trunks is pretty common. Besides," he winked as Erik Potage, leading the group, opened the door to the pub. "Tom likes to give treats as we wait our turn to use the floo. He says it's our last meal before 'succumbing to school' for a few months."

Elisabeth nodded in understanding, following him into the dark pub. Being the middle of the day, it was almost empty except for the other kids and Tom. Florean set the two trunks off to the side of the door before grabbing her hand as she tried to wander off to stare at the wall decorations. Tugging her up to Tom, who was greeting Marissa and Taris with meat pies, he thrust her right into the front of the group.

Tom was a young man, not many years out of Hogwarts, but already was losing his hair. A spell from a drunk customer battling with a clothes hanger had knocked the teeth from his mouth a few months ago, but Tom had yet to take himself to St Mungo's, ignoring his mother's mutters from the kitchen and his father's sighs as he passed the barkeeping boy. Tom didn't seem to care a wit, but Florean always joked to Elisabeth that someday a pretty witch would come about and change _that_.

"Who's this?" Tom asked.

"Our new Diagon Alley kid!"

"Ollivander's new apprentice, Elisabeth. She's a distant relative of some sort."

"Only arrived a few months ago."

"A first year!"

All the voices spoke at once as Florean rolled his eyes. Exchanging a glance with the barkeeper-in-training, he spoke over the rabble, "A bunch of hooligans, aren't they?"

With a chuckle, Tom smiled at the boy. "Hallo there Florean. I was wondering when you were going to show up."

"Hallo Tom." Florean shook hands with the man. "You might actually remember our girl. Took a tumble out of your Floo three months back when she first came."

With a frown, Tom thought for a second before shrugging. "I don't remember it, but I screwed up some rooms really bad in April; all of May was kitchen work and table cleaning, just like when I was a kid. Wasn't out in the front at all really. Probably missed her."

Erik and Florean, both of whom had taken more major roles in the running of their family businesses, each shook their heads. Erik commiserated, "I know how that feels. Pop finally let me take the shop for whole days at a time this summer, but any time something went even a bit wrong, he put me back at jobs I was doing as a firstie."

"Tom, I thought they were giving you control of the entire bar this summer," piped up third year Hufflepuff, Matthew Corie of Boots and Buckles by Corie.

"I thought so too," joked Tom with a half-grin. "You'd best be going, all of you. The train will be gone in just less than a half hour."

There was a mad scramble first to grab a meat pie from the table next to him, then to the Floo by the kids. Falling from a glancing shoulder push, Elisabeth found herself caught by the barkeep. She gave him a quite thank you when he put her upright and stared at the ground.

"Careful there. You are a small thing, aren't you?" Tom handed her a slightly squished patty.

Florean checked her over quickly, looking for injuries on her accident prone body. "Thanks Tom." He gently pushed her towards the fireplace where Erik, Zacharias, and Taris had already disappeared in a flash of green flame. "You go on and wait with Marissa and the others, ok?"

As she walked away, she heard Tom say, "One of your lost souls?"

In a grim tone, Florean responded, "You should have seen here when she got here. She just needs some support. A parent would be great, but..." He trailed off.

"Ollivander isn't very parental." Tom understood.

Just as Elisabeth was turning to defend her master to them, Matthew popped in front of her. Through a mouth full of crust, he sprayed crumbs all over her, than said, "Thes' 're grea'! You gunna ea' yours?"

Arista Golken, Taris's older sister and a sixth year Gryffindor, pushed him away from the small girl, "Gross, Matt. Finish eating before you talk." As he swallowed and opened his mouth, she followed this up by saying, "And now that you have covered her in crumbs, she is not going to give you her meat pie."

She turned to Elisabeth and started helping her get crust out of her black hair. "He is such a barbarian," Arista muttered to the other girl. Pulling a large piece from above her ear, she said brightly, "On the up side, meat pie is _totally_ in right now."

The two girls giggled. Arista sighed, "I am so envious of your hair, you know. Not this limp blonde stuff," she held up a piece of her own hair. "Yours is so thick and curly and wild and soft."

"It gets everywhere." Elisabeth wrinkled her nose.

"It certainly seems to float around your head rather than obey gravity," Arista agreed.

Florean bustled over to the two, the only left standing at the fireplace. "Ready to go?" he asked. "Woah, Elisabeth, what happened to your hair?"

"Oh shush!" Arista hissed to the boy. She reassured Elisabeth, saying, "It looks fine."

With a shrug at the antics of girls, Florean grabbed both trunks again. "I'll meet you two on the other side, ok?" Elisabeth grabbed his hand just before he hopped through the fireplace. Seeing the look of fear on her face he bent down to her level. "What's wrong?"

,

"I… I don't like…" she whimpered. "Not since..."

 _The screams, the yells- Hands shoving her through the Floo- no one following and…._

 _Alone… I've never been more alone._ Her hands shook at her sides.

As she began quivering, she could feel Florean and Arista exchange glances. He motioned for Arista to go through before him, muttering to her, "I've got this." He then sank to meet her at eye level. "It's ok, Elisabeth. Arista's going to be right on the other side to catch you."

Out of the corner of her eye, Elisabeth saw the older girl nodding her partial understanding; only Florean knew what had happened to her those months ago. Arista hopped into the green flames and spun away with a cry of "King's Cross!"

With the beginnings of a sob shaking her body, Florean whispered, "This is nothing like the last time, ok? You aren't being sent off to-" The tears started in earnest but Elisabeth refused to cry aloud; they wouldn't get that from her. Florean stopped himself. Squeezing her tight, he offered silence.

A tap on his shoulder alerted them both to Tom. Elisabeth ignored him as he mouthed to Florean, " _I'll bring the trunks over for you._ "

With a nod, she felt Florean wrap his arms around her in a comforting hug. She cried silently for a few more second before trying to calm down as Tom Flooed back. Letting her go, Florian said softly, "We have to go now, or we will miss the train. But we can go through together; Tom brought our bags to the station."

Nodding her assent, she gripped his large hand in her small one. He tossed a large handful of powder in, waved to Tom, and then calmly walked into the fire.

 **Y1C1-Y1C1-Y1C1**

Elisabeth watched silently as Florean wedged her new trunk next to his on the overhead shelves. They were already overfull; Florean's friends had grabbed the compartment earlier, and shoved their own stuff up and away. There was little space left for the pair.

When the two had crash landed in the grate of King's Cross, Elisabeth had been worried that Arista and Florean would leave her to find a place to sit alone. Instead, the older girl had picked her up off the ground where she'd flown from the fireplace to, given her a hug, and kindly introduced her to Theodore Tonks, or "Ted" as he had said to call him. In turn, Ted had grabbed her trunk with a grin and told the elder pair that they had already gotten a compartment to sit in.

"Almost thought you wouldn't make it," he had told the others as he led them through the narrow train hallways." The other prefects sent me out here to do a last check before the train left."

"We, uh…. Had a bit of a rough time leaving," Florean hadn't look at the tiny girl as he said this. Instead, he had focused on passing a group of snotty looking kids, well dressed and blocking the hallway. They had laughed nastily, pointing at the shopkeep kids' ratty trunks, scuffed shoes, and well-worn clothes. Even though Florean ignored them, Elisabeth had noticed Arista glaring at the group.

"Bigots. Our blood is as pure as theirs," She had muttered, frowning after they had passed by.

Slipping into a compartment to their left, Ted had remarked, "At least the eldest Black graduated last year."

They'd been welcomed into the room with yells, shouts, and hugs. As Florean and Ted struggled with the trunks, Arista introduced the group. "This is Harmony Jacobs, Addison Peirce, Mali Kutane, Jason Keystone, Marissa Atkins, and, of course, Ted Tonks. They're all sixth year Hufflepuffs, like Florean, but I share a few classes with them too."

Shy, Elisabeth nodded hello to each one. Perching as close the door as she could, she tried to make herself even tinier. Florean finished hefting his trunk up, then plopped down next to her. "Little Elisabeth is Ollivander's new apprentice," he explained. "I showed her around a bit this summer. She's a bit nervous about this year."

"Ah, nothing to worry about, love," comforted dark-haired Jason Keystone from across the compartment.

Harmony Jacobs nodded with a reassuring smile from next to the window. "He's right. You'll like Hogwarts."

"Hey, where were your parents? I just saw you come in with those two." Jason pointed at Arista and Florean.

Elisabeth stared at the ground, feeling the shakes starting to reemerge _. My parents…._

Arista gave the tiny girl a hidden hug as Florean gave a strained laugh. "Aw, come on Jason! You know us Alley kids come alone to the train. Our families can't take the day off work to send us out! It's always been that way."

"Yean, but usually for a first year, they come, don't th-"

Florean shook his head fiercely at the other boy. Elisabeth's head dropped even lower and she tries to ignore the tears that were so close to falling from her eyes. Ted swiftly changed the topic. "So um…. Did you all know Bellatrix Black graduated?"

Mali Kutane groaned. "Thank God." She said. "That girl was a holy terror."

"Oh look!" Addison pointed out the window. "She's standing right there!"

Elisabeth watched as the others rushed to the window looking into the train corridor. Florean shook his head. "Nah, not her. Too short. Looks like a miniature version of her though. Another sister?"

Moving back to his seat after a moment, Ted frowned. "No, they don't have any other sisters. I think it may be a cousin… I'll have to ask Andy."

Elisabeth wondered who Andy was.

"I heard her other cousin, Sirius Black, the heir of the Black family, starts this year." Mali offered. As the train whistled twice and began to move away from the station, the other sixth years groaned. "Maybe he's not so bad?"

The other Hufflepuff girls gave her a look.

"What's so bad about them?" Elisabeth spoke up.

Florean grimaced. "It's not him, so much as it's…."

"His family isn't very nice." Offered up Harmony. "The Blacks? Always Slytherins. They have a reputation."

"They aren't all like that," piped up Ted, "I mean, even Blacks can be kind and caring."

Elisabeth watched as Mali and Jason laughed and the other kids smiled. Turning to the first year, Florean explained, "Ted has a bit of a crush on Ms Andromeda Black."

"The only decent Slytherin I know," muttered one of the others as Ted turned a little pink.

"You all like her though, right? I mean," Ted flushed a little more. "She's really nice."

The others started to tease Ted, getting dirtier and dirtier, before Arista took pity on the boy. "Hold off for a moment. Let's not give the impressionable Elisabeth an early life lesson, shall we?"

"Nah," Jason piped up. With a wink to Elisabeth, he smirked at Ted. "She'll have to learn eventually."

"I hate you, Jason. Really, really hate you." Ted glared at him.

Arista steered their snickering friends to a new topic. "So, Elisabeth, you excited for Hogwarts?"

Startled by the sudden attention, she blinked and looked down. "…Yes?"

"I heard the class this year is smaller. People transferring to Beauxbatons or Durmstrang," said Harmony with a frown.

"A few of the smaller schools here in England too," piped up Jason. "Some are even taking up apprenticeships." Elisabeth perked up; she was an apprentice. But why would they not go to school?

"Makes sense. Hogwarts might be one of the safest places in Magical Britain right now, but it is also a target," frowned Florean.

"Dumbledore standing against the new Dark wizards, just like he did against Grindelwald." Mali shook her head. Glaring at the ground, she muttered, "Not that it helps that if you take someone's kid, they would do anything to get them back."

"Not that we need to worry about that," Arista backtracked quickly with a glance at Elisabeth. "The headmaster will keep us safe from that threat your mum always worries about, Florean."

Florean nodded as he wrapped an arm around Elisabeth. "You won't even know there are scuffles between those guys and the Aurors when we're at Hogwarts, Elisabeth. Your class'll just be a bit smaller, likely less than twenty, with so many headed overseas.*"

Nodding like she understood the connections between politics and attacks and classes, she tuned out. Arista and Florean continued speaking, giving her advice, something about a trick step? And a Peeves? Bored and easily distracted, Elisabeth picked up a book that someone had tossed on the floor and something called a 'bins' started a discussion of teacher standards that should or should not exist between the sixth years. The book's title read _Standard Book of Spells: Year 6_. Tucking her feet up onto the chair, she began to read as the Hufflepuffs and single Gryffindor created chaos and someone threw a sock at Ted.

 _Chapter One: Review of Modern Spellcasting.. . ._

Much later, she paused as an elbow jostled her and emerged from a world of _swishes, flicks_ , and sharp left _jabs_ to hear someone say, "-Ravenclaw, no?"

"Yeah, probably." Elisabeth resurfaced from the school text long enough to hear Florean's remark. She noticed the whole group studying her and looked back at them with bewilderment, attention torn from the book pages. Somehow, one of the trunks must have spilt all over the room, because wrappers and socks and jumpers were strewn over every surface not sat on. Mali and Jason each had a shirt draped on their heads as Arista chucked yet another sock in Florean's direction.

Florean chuckled at Elisabeth as he caught the projectile with a single hand. "We were just talking about you."

"…. Oh." Her brow wrinkled, trying to remember what they had said.

Arista smiled kindly at her. "Go back to your book, Elisabeth. We are only half way there. We'll tell you when you should start to change your robes."

Still confused, Elisabeth started to change positions but the sudden opening of the compartment door shifted her in her already precarious position. Tumbling onto the floor into a pile of chocolate frog wrappers, she greeted the newcomer with an "Ooph !"

"Wotcher there. You alright?" asked the round faced girl. Her mousy brown hair fell forward as she tried to help the littler girl up. Elisabeth took the proffered hand with a blush, but the soft grey eyes held no judgment.

"Andy!" cried several voices. Ted hopped up to greet her as she steadied the wobbly first year.

"Andy," he said with a great big smile. "Wasn't sure you would be able to come say hello on the train."

"Who's the little one?" asked the girl.

Florean grinned with amusement. "She's one of mine. A new Alley kid, Ollivander's new apprentice. Elisabeth Ollivander, meet Andromeda Black."

Andromeda gave the black haired girl a look-over. Softly she said, "You must be a first year."

Elisabeth nodded, staring at the book on her lap. The next chapter started to catch her attention and _Ooh, color changing spells that change when the attitude of a person changes!_

"I have two cousins who are first years too. Maybe you'll meet them. They're really ni- " She stopped herself and Elisabeth refocused on Andromeda. "Well, they're both enthusiastic, though I wouldn't step on Nathandra's toes if I were you." Turning to the others, she gave a wry smile. "She's why I took so long actually. She and Cissa were sitting with me. Neither would approve of…. Well, you know." She and Ted exchanged glances.

As Florean moved to make room for her, he gave Andromeda a wry grin. "Awe, we aren't so bad."

"Yean," added Jason. "We don't bite like that second year Gryffindor girl does." The whole group chuckled as Andromeda sat in between Ted and Florean.

"How in the world is this compartment so messy already?" asked Andy with a grin.

As everyone opened their mouth to blame the mess on someone else, Elisabeth scrunched herself even further into the corner of the compartment. Re-opening the book, she began to yawn. Minutes later, she caught herself nodding off to the words of a modified _accio_. She shook herself. Not long after, the words began to dance across the page. _Huh,_ she thought. _They aren't supposed to do that._

The book dropped out of her hands. As she fell asleep, she heard Andromeda say, "She must be overwhelmed."

"We'll wake her up when we get closer…." Elisabeth thought she heard Arista say as the smaller girl surrendered to sleep.

Ollivander's apprentice dozed off as the Hogwarts Express took her closer to her new home.

 **A/N:**

 *** Each year in this story will have two full rooms per each gender. This way James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter will share a room but there will be more than 8 kids per house per year. Do the math, and you have 32 kids for the entire year and only 224 for the whole school and 16 kids in Transfiguration with McGongall at a time (Rather small). Assuming you have a population that lives to be, oh, let's just say 130 as an average, your entire British Wizarding world is 4160 people. Let's assume some went to other schools, to a tune of 4 or 5 kids a year and there were a few other schools in England so 4 or five more kids, then you have 4230 wizards, give or take a ten. You don't need a ministry the size that JKR describes to support a group this large. So we inflated the numbers by a bit.**

 **You now have an average class, pre-war of twenty kids a year and during the war it drops to about 18 a year due to fear and people leaving the country (It will drop a few more each year after). ACCORDING TO JKR, THE WAR STARTED THE YEAR PRIOR TO THE MARAUDERS ENTERING HOGWARTS, so this is reasonable. This means now Professor McGonagall has 40 people or fewer to watch over in class, a bit big, but reasonable. Then you end up with a population of 560 at Hogwarts maximum (pre war numbers) and a general population of close to 10,600 total (including random people who went abroad or apprenticed). During the war, this drops every day. There is likely a point where people got scared to have kids, leading to there being far fewer people in Harry's classes. As it stands for these books, there will be larger classes and more kids.**


	2. Chapter 2: Entry to Hogwarts

**Year One: 1971**

 **Chapter Two:**

It was the sudden jolt of the train that woke Elisabeth up, not the fall from the seat onto the compartment floor that immediately followed. Elisabeth could tell the concerned Arista and chuckling Florean quite confidently that she had been awake for the entirety of _that_ experience.

" I'm fine," Elisabeth told the older girl crossly and still half asleep." S'not a big deal."

The Gryffindor gave her a look as she checked the first year for injuries. The sixth year Hufflepuffs grinned. Florean, eyes twinkling, pulled the girl away from Arista into the empty seat between himself and Ted. "Ah, she's a kid, Arista. I'm sure she's had worse."

"Yes," agreed Elisabeth eagerly. Reseating herself blithely, she continued, "Like last Wednesday, when Master Ollivander magic-ed a ladder out from under me while I was stacking the top shelves because he had to grab a wand from the compartment hanging from the ceiling left of the Rocky Mountain Evergreen wood wand section and I fell thirty feet."

The entire compartment stopped talking. Florean's jaw dropped and Arista looked like she was going to faint. Ted Tonks and the others just stared. Unaware of the attention now focused on her, the girl picked up the sixth year text she'd been reading. Nose re-entering the book, she inquired abstractly, "Can I borrow this?"

"Are you alright?" Arista asked faintly.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, the fall. Fine, fine. He just forgot I was up there." She looked up for a moment, blithely unaware of the impact of her statement, and frowned. "Where did Andromeda Black go?"

"Andy, uhhh…" Ted started distractedly. He shook his head and seemed to go back to normal. "She said she had to go check on Sirius, her cousin, and find her sister and other cousin. We'll see her at the Sorting."

Jason Keystone spoke to Elisabeth." You must have some strong accidental magic."

Frowning, she asked confused, "Pardon me, but I'm not sure I understand."

The incident had clearly been forgotten.

"In any case," announced Florean, changing the topic. "We should all change. We'll be there shortly. Girls, change here; us boys 'Il head to the loo." Leaning over to Elisabeth's ear he whispered, "Glad to see you back to your old self. You've been glum all day."

She gave him a small smile. "Master Ollivander doesn't have many books. I rather like books."

"No shortage of them where we're going," grumbled Mali Kutane as she gathered robes from the trunks overhead. Tossing clothing at people, she whooped. "Catch!"

Watching Arista close the curtains into the hallway, Elisabeth started to pull off her sweater. While the other girls began the real girl talk with the boys away, she started to daydream. _Wonder what the Sorting'll be like._

An image of an armed goblin to fight popped in her head. Then piles of testing paper appeared in her imagination. She frowned. _But I don't know anything yet. How will I do well?_

"Arista," she interrupted the other girl. "Arista, what is the sorting like?"

The other girl thought for a moment. "It's like-"

"No," cried Mali Kutane. "Let her find out the way we all did!" The other girls agreed.

"Yes, listen to Mali!"

"No fun otherwise."

"It's part of the experience!"

The boys knocked on the door, cutting off their words. Ted yelled through the wood. "You all decent?"

Mali yanked open the sliding door without a look at the others, as Harmony shoving a shirt over her head. "Arista's going to tell the first year what the Sorting is."

Ted smiled ominously. "Well, we can't have that."

"Thank yo-"

"I'll tell her," Ted smirked.

"No, don't-"started Mali and Jason.

Amid protest from all sides, he began, "Well, it starts with a cockerel and a storm…."

Y1C2-Y1C2-Y1C2

It was with a whirling head that Elisabeth disembarked from the train with several smirking sixth years. She frowned intensely at her feet as she stepped down, determined that her first contact with the Hogwarts grounds would be by her foot rather than her face as it broke her fall.

"Firs' years! Firs' years over!"

Not noticing the cheerful wave Florean sent her, she followed the sound of the rumbling voice. It belonged to a huge man, who seemed covered in hair. The large man, who looked like a small giant, was directing the group of confused looking first years.

"C'mon, follow me – any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me!"

He motioned exaggeratedly to the worn old dock with several dozen boats floating nearby. As he walked over to the dock, Elizabeth could've sworn he shook the ground with each step. Curiosity about the boats overriding any fear of the big man, she was the first to break from the group of first years and follow after him. As the pair stepped closer to the dock, a single boat floated over until one could step off the dock onto it.

"How does it do that?" she asked, her attention entirely on the vessel in front of her.

"Magic." The huge man winked. He motioned to the other first years, still slowly edging their way to the dock, and yelled out, "'Urry up there! Come on now!"

"Now, 'm Rubius Hagrid, grounds keeper 'ere at 'Ogwarts. These boats here will be takin' us to the castle. Oy, you!" he shouted at some stragglers still coming over from the train. "'Urry up! No more'n four to a boat!"

Elisabeth watched her future classmates skirt the large man, putting the maximum amount of distance between themselves and the man easily three times their size. Studying their faces as they got close to him, how most seemed to shrink away from the enormous man and eye him warily, she didn't even notice when an aristocratic looking boy with golden blond hair poked her. She did notice when that poke turned into a more noticeable jab.

"Ow?" It was really more of a question than anything else.

"You going to get in?" he gestured with a languid wave at the boat.

The olive skinned boy with black hair elbowed his friend. "What Greengrass means to say is, 'we would love to join you in your boat if you would permit us.'"

"Yes. Though it's not my boat, is it? How do you think it works?" she stopped suddenly to gaze intently at the object, manners overcome in the face of curiosity.

"Great," muttered the one called Greengrass. "All the boats to choose from and we choose the one with the crazy Muggleborn." The other boy raised an expressive eyebrow at that before he lightly hopped into the boat. His friend followed a moment later.

Elisabeth was still standing on the dock, trying to figure out how the magic could work without an active wand supplying conscious direction for it. Figuring that the person controlling the wooden boats must be hidden somewhere around, as it certainly wasn't that obtuse hairy man directing the first years, she spun around without warning, losing her balance and falling into a stout child who had been walking past.

"All right there?" His pale green eyes showed how she had startled him with the sudden movement.

Any squeak she had been about to make to cover up her reddening cheeks was interrupted by the more impatient of the two boys in her boat, who was clearly done waiting. "You getting in?"

"Mmmm," she responded without glancing at them. She could feel the eye rolling happening behind her as she begun to pay a bit more attention to her surroundings. With another sudden turn, she faced the aristocratic boy and his darker skinned friend. A step closer and an ungraceful leap later, she'd deposited herself into the boat with an elbow in one boy's stomach and a foot in the other's face.

"Oops," she said with a wayward smile and air of distractedness. She pretended not to notice the discomfort she'd caused. As the two helped her up and into an actual seat, their aristocratic roots showing, she glanced back up at the stout blonde boy. "Aren't you coming?"

He raised an eyebrow, surprised by the comment.

"Come on now, the boats are almost full and that large man is looking funny at us. There isn't barely any room for someone else on those other boats."

All three boys paused for a moment, looking around. The dark haired girl was right. In the time it had taken for her to trip into the boy on the dock and sprawl over the two in the boat, all the boats save one were full. "Creepy," whispered the dark haired boy to the one who went by Greengrass. "I hadn't even noticed, had you?"

As the short stout boy vaulted easily into the boat, Greengrass shook his head. Staring at the girl as she bent perilously far over the front edge of the boat, he agreed. "Weird, yeah…"

As the boats started to move, the heavier boy introduced himself. "I'm William Chambers. I go by Will, though."

"Ah, I recognize the name. You family is from Glaslow, isn't it?" asked the other blonde.

With an easy smile, Will responded, "The family originally is. Our branch is from an hour or two outside of London in the country."

The other two boys nodded. Suddenly, the entire boat jerked as Elisabeth sat up and pointed excitedly off into the distance. "Look at that! A mermaid!"

They all looked in the direction of her finger, but instead of noticing any sort of creature, they were immediately entranced by their first sighting of the Hogwarts Castle. It was stunning. Perched on the very edge of a cliff, it was lit up merrily from the inside so that warm light filtered onto the children on the boats through the windows. Three towers stood far above the rest of the structure and seemed to watch over the loch and valley beneath them. The magic of the moment made the entire castle seem to glow.

"Wow," breathed Will.

"Yeah," the two boys responded in agreement. The three boys sat in silence for a few minutes until their fourth, fascinated by something else now, made the boat rock wildly again.

"What the hell!?" Greengrass's exclamation broke the spell over the four. He glared at the offender, who didn't even register his new focus, and muttered, "Muggleborn."

His friend chuckled and spoke to Will. "I'm Septimus Zabini and this is Nikodemus Greengrass."

"Ah. Childhood friends?" asked the green eyed boy.

"Acquaintances, I suppose. We grew up in the same circle, though Greengrass has a much more extensive education in that respect than I."

"Different. Not extensive," disagreed the other diplomatically. "We'd never talked until the train ride actually." Nodding towards the tiny girl, he asked, "Do you two know each other?"

As Will opened his mouth to speak, Elisabeth turned the force of her attention on Zabini and Greengrass. "No. No, not at all. But he needed a place to sit. And you," she looked directly at Greengrass. "You said I was a Muggleborn. I'm not though, magic has always run in my family. I'm Elisabeth Ollivander, of Ollivander's Wands. My great uncle apprenticed me at the shop this last year."

Greengrass and Zabini both looked rather surprised at her abrupt declaration; it was well known that the wandmaker was a confirmed bachelor, happily living alone, though little else was known about the entire Ollivander family. However, Will just smiled. "Ah. Sounds like fun."

"Mmmm, well, Master Ollivander is fascinating. Do you see that? Another creature. A tentacle-what has tentacles?" Her attention was diverted again and the boat tipped dangerously as she lunged toward the side. It was only Zabini's quick grab at the back of her school robe that stopped her from tumbling in. Water was tossed up by the rocking and soaked Greengrass through.

"Why don't we just sit and talk for a moment?" voiced Will evenly even as his grin threatened to break into laughter. Greengrass glared at the wild haired girl, shoving his dripping hair back from his face and wringing his dripping robe out.

"When did you get so wet?" asked the oblivious Elisabeth as she glanced back.

Zabini ignored the outraged spluttering coming from his left. "So Ollivander, the master wandmaker is your great uncle?"

"Elisabeth. I go by Elisabeth. And yes, he is. Didn't I say that?" She frowned to herself and seemed to be lost in her thoughts, trying to remember. "Yes, I did."

Zabini exchanged a glance with Will and the blonde boy swiftly changed the topic. "What house do you think you'll be in, Zabini?"

The lanky boy shrugged. "Neither Slytherin nor Gryffindor. To political right now, with the Dark Lord and the Ministry going at it."

"And you are no Hufflepuff," stated Greengrass, now dumping water out of his shoes overboard.

"Ravenclaw, probably then?" guessed Will.

"Yes, I expect so."

"And you, Greengrass?"

"Same for the same reasons. Zabini and Greengrass are neutral houses." Greengrass put his shoes back on and began to wring out his wizard's cap.

"Bee in your bonnet there?" smirked Zabini.

Greengrass flicked water at the other boy. Retaliation was swift; cupped hands lifted lake water up and over the side of the boat and right into Greengrass's face.

"Oops," came the insincere comment from Zabini.

"You know," said Will with faux perplexion. "There is water all over your robes."

"And feet," added the black haired boy.

"And hair."

"And hat. Again."

"And-" Greengrass turned his back to the two, filled up his cap, and flung the water at the other boys. But because he was aiming for both Will, in front of him, and Zabini, to his right, the water went-

"What in the world?!" a very wet girl shrieked as they finally approached the dock on the other side of the lake. "What was that for?!"

At this, all three boys burst into laughter. They broke into gales of giggles every time she glared at them, still totally lost.

"It's not funny! I'm all wet!" When she muttered that, they couldn't help themselves and laughed even harder. Elisabeth huffed and ungracefully rose to her feet as the boat reached the far end of the lake. She wobbled over to the other side to get on the dock and found she wouldn't be able to get out without exposing her backside to the snickering boys. As she pondered her problem, fuming, Will hopped out still chuckling and grabbed her hand to pull her onto the dock. After getting her feet under her, she glared at the chuckling boys still in the boat.

She frowned, then remarked to Greengrass, "Did you know that your robes are a bit wet?"

Zabini in the boat wrapped his arms around his belly, laughing, while Will on the dock slowly sank to his knees doing the same. Greengrass's mouth had dropped open and he glared at the girl. "You-you, Merlin's pants-YOU-"

Ignoring the broken boy behind her, Elisabeth turned and followed their fellow students as they walked up a long staircase from the docks. As she stepped away, she heard Zabini gasp out, "She's growing on me."

"Me too," choked out Will, still kneeling on the dock.

As she turned a corner, she saw Greengrass's eloquent response of a two fingered salute* in their direction and grumbled to herself at the antics of boys.

Y1C2-Y1C2-Y1C2

It was with some trepidation that Elisabeth climbed the last few steps up to the Great Hall of Hogwarts. _I'm not afraid of this,_ she told herself. _Not afraid of this because there is no way that we have to talk a bear into letting us take its golden feather (bears don't have feathers no matter how bizarre the Taiwanese bears are because bears don't have feathers. That… doesn't really fit with logic but really, bears don't have feathers.). Or race Dumbledore's phoenix across the Hall. Or… Or… Or anything else those sixth years were telling me about._

 _Nope, not scared at all…_

Elisabeth tried not to trip on the robes of the boy in front of her when he stopped abruptly with the rest of the group; the students had all come to a halt at the top of the stairs. Hagrid gave a stern, middle-aged woman with her dark brown hair in a tight bun a brief nod, smiled at a messy-haired kid with hazel eyes and glasses, then slipped into a side passage. The female professor walked over and curtly welcomed them.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," the woman said. "My name is Professor McGonagall. The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly. However, before you take your seat, you will need to be sorted into your houses. The Sorting Ceremony is very important because while you are here at Hogwarts your house will become your family. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend your free time in your house common room. The four houses are called…"

Elisabeth's attention wavered as she watched the interaction between two boys, one the boy the hairy giant had nodded to and the other… _A Black? The grey eyes are the mark of that family, as is the dark hair, but I'm fairly certain that is a Potter with that wild hair and horrible eyesight. But I'm really not certain. Perhaps I should have paid more attention when Master Garrick was teaching me about the Old Families…_

She watched as the two whispered madly throughout the speech McGonagall gave. Bumping each other, pointing out various people and giggling, the two seemed like they had known each other for a long time. They would stop and grin conspiratorially occasionally before stepping just a bit closer to each other and then-

 _Was that a ghost?_

She turned and stared as one addressed a smaller black haired girl on the other side of the hall, attention now totally diverted. The only ghosts on Diagon Alley hid themselves carefully. One wandered about the side alley next to Gringotts, never shutting up about goblins, gold, and 'pesky little alarm systems,' while the other concealed herself in the upper rooftops of the Alley and never came down. To see a ghost interact with a living person was a bit bizarre. _I mean, the_ _ **Traveler's Guide to Ancient Celts in Scotland**_ _said that ghosts sometimes offer advice, but the ones in the Alle- at home, the ones at my home, they never really acknowledge us._

"Thinking hard, youngster?"

Without looking at the speaker, Elisabeth offhandedly spoke what she had been thinking. "Ghosts here are odd."

Then she turned to look at the speaker and the world stopped for a moment. In the background, she could hear the snickering of her yearmates. They didn't register with her because she was looking at a tubby, grinning Franciscan friar that happened to be a ghost.

"Are they now?" he smiled indulgently.

Regaining her senses, she cocked her head and chose to stick by her original statement. "Yes. Yes, I do think so. Most ghosts are more reticent and private, and yet you..."

"Ah. Well, perhaps another time we might have a longer discussion about this." He patted her head with an amused smile ( _Oh my, that's cold! How bizarre._ ) as the professor spoke up from the front of the hall.

"The Sorting Ceremony's about to begin. Form two lines now."

Smiling goodbye to the rotund ghost, she turned and promptly walked into willowy girl with tawny red-brown hair. Stumbling back, an unexpected hand caught her wrist just before she fell to the ground.

"Careful there," came the remark from the other girl. "I heard falling isn't good for your butt."

Elisabeth cautiously smiled as she righted herself. The crowd began moving forward, and with it, the two girls.

"Excited?" asked the other girl, without giving her a chance to respond. "So am I- Woah…"

The two had entered the main hall. Elisabeth too was struck silent by the room. The ceiling reflected the sky outside just like Hogwarts, A History had said and hundreds of candles seemed to float in the sky. The side walls were lined with more wall sconces throwing off light and several fireplaces bordered the edges as well. Four long tables, filled with many curious faces, stood in the room and at the far end was a table with all the teachers sitting and watching. Behind them stood several dozen portraits, each occupant talking to another, and a huge stained glass window above that **.

"Holy cow," muttered the tawny haired girl next to her. "Those robes."

The headmaster's robes were a stunningly florescent shade of purple with red-orange Muggle flying machines on them. Elisabeth nodded in stunned agreement, mouth hung slightly ajar.

Wrenching her gaze from those rememberable robes, Elisabeth glanced up at the banners hanging about each table. To her far right were crimson pennants, each with a rampant golden lion. Next to them, lining the path that the unsorted first years walked down, yellow standards with black badgers hung from above, while on the direct left of them lay navy banners and bronze eagles. On the far left edge of the room, silver serpents and deep green flags swayed slowly.

The group of first years finished their awed walk to the front of the hall before stopping off to the side of a stool with a ratty old hat laying on it. Unexpectedly, the hat opened some of its old creases, which had become a mouth and began to sing. Elisabeth tuned out the actual words of the song as she tried to think of how an inanimate object would be part of the sorting process. She caught the few words describing its role in the Sorting and immediately began thinking, mind whirling with questions: _where are its brains? How can it think? Does it need a physical connection to the person it sorts before it can work? Or maybe it-_

Her thoughts were interrupted when the Sorting Hat abruptly fell silent and the seated students burst into applause. The occasional first year clapped, but Elisabeth could feel the tension gathering among her yearmates. Clearing her throat, Professor McGonagall quieted the entire room.

"Abbott, Matthais."

A boy nudged her to the side as he walked, zombie-like, to the stool. Perching on its edge, the Hat was lowered onto his head for only a moment before it called out:

"Ravenclaw!"

The blue and bronze table cheered loudly for the boy as he rose tentatively. Removing the hat quickly, he scampered off to the table near the center and sat. Students clapped his shoulder and shook his hand.

McGonagall continued. "Avery, Demitri."

"Slytherin!" called out the Hat as soon as it touched his head.

"Black, Sirius."

The grey-eyed black-haired boy Elisabeth had watched earlier nervously walked up to the chair. Defiantly, he grabbed up the hat and firmly placed himself on the stool before grinning and dropping it on his head. A few seconds later, the Sorting Hat still hadn't given him a house. They were… arguing?

Tension grew in the room. _A Black not a Slytherin? Unlikely, and yet… he hasn't really acted like those other Blacks who have been around the Alley._

A minute passed, then two, before:

"GRYFFINDOR!"

The whole hall gaped at him as he tremblingly picked the hat off his head and stared at it. The Slytherin table hissed angrily. He slowly got up from the stool and stepped down and away from the Hat. All the students turned and silently watched him walk towards the Gryffindor table when suddenly, the Gryffindors let out a wild cheer, ignoring their shock and claiming him as their own. Sirius appeared to be both thrilled and terrified. With a fast look at the house the world had thought he belonged in, Sirius flashed a huge gleeful grin to his new housemates and seated himself among their whooping members.

Elisabeth observed him as the professors quieted the student body again. He couldn't seem to stop smiling. His obvious pleasure infected the students next to him and they shared grins. The next Gryffindor to join the house, Stella Brown, walked to their table amidst Sirius's infectious hurrahs as he cheered louder than all the other members of Gryffindor. The play of emotions of his face, not tempered and all showing boldly, kept her occupied until:

"Ollivander, Elisabeth."

Elisabeth looked at McGonagall like a prancing centaur caught in a _lumos_. Her hands started shaking as she took her first step. She noticed the room focusing on her and then-

She tripped.

Catching herself before she fell, she heard people tittering around the room. Elisabeth began to turn a bright tomato red, shifted her wild hair until it hid her face, and was grateful to sit and slip on the giant wizarding cap. Thinking to herself, she sighed _Well, that could have gone better._

 _Could have,_ said a dry whispery voice in her head.

She jumped on the stool, slipping a bit off to the right. Centering herself, she cautiously extended a question.

 _Who am I? Well, I'm the Sorting Hat._

Elisabeth guessed that made sense. She had a sudden thought and-

 _Yes._ Amusement slipped into the mental voice. _The founders created me, animating me with some spells that activate only once a year for a period of 73 hours._

A frown later.

 _Seventy three? Because Helga wanted to be contrary; Salazar had just attacked a plant of hers while Godric had stolen her morning bacon and Rowena was ignoring them all in favor of a new project. She got frustrated. Mind if I poke around in here- Transfer students? We've made due. Now I really must- Ahh, Salazar had quite a gift with words. He and Godric created several ditties for me to sing, though they got rather inappropriate as more liquor was consumed… No, I shan't repeat them._

She pursed her lips, curiosity dashed.

 _They are not meant for young ears. Helga magic-ed them to bed while Rowena gave me some ability to change around the Sorting Song. Now then, sorting- No, I don't know where my brain is kept. And yes, I do require a physical connection to sort a person. The boats? Not a clue how they get across the lake._

 _All these questions, girlie. There is only one place for you with that curiosity..._

The lip of that hat opened to shout out " _RAVENCLAW!_ "

Her table clapped loudly for her as she dropped the hat onto the stool, her mind once again her own. Smiling shyly at Florean a table over with the Hufflepuffs, she thought to herself, _Just like he predicted_.

Wandering to the members to her new house, she plopped down next to Selina Nott, sorted just before herself, and across from Nikodemus Greengrass, whom Elisabeth had sat next to on the boat, and Melina Greengrass; _the two must be related,_ she thought. The boy acknowledged her with a nod. Both girls eyed her for a moment before formally introducing themselves in stilted whispers. Melina Greengrass gave her a distracted once over, nose wrinkling at the worn robes and wrinkled jumper underneath, before refocusing on the Sorting, happily people-watching now that Elisabeth had been assessed and categorized as "Not At My Level".

Elisabeth ignored the girl as she watched the Sorting as well. Peakes, Marianne ( _a little bit trembly on that stool_ ) and Pond, David ( _too awed by the hall to be anything but a muggleborn. Maybe just muggle-raised?_ ) joined them before a messy haired boy Elisabeth recognized had his name called.

"Potter, James."

Only a second later, then "GRYFFINDOR!"

 _Only to be expected. And look at that,_ she thought as an exultant Black met Potter with a cry of delight, slapping him on his back and grinning madly. Potter grinned right back at him before whispering something that made the two of them burst into laughter. The Gryffindors pulled them into seats as Potter made a comment. The surrounding students all grinned and chuckled. Jealousy shot through Elisabeth for a moment. _Those two are best friends already._

More people-watching ensued. Robins, Lawrence became a Gryffindor and came away with a stunned facial expression.

The girl who followed after him was interesting. She was the girl that Florean and the others had noticed as they had gotten settled in the train, the one who looked like… A Black sister?

 _Nathandra Rosier walks up to that stool with some confidence_ , thought Elisabeth sourly, flushing again with the memory of her own journey to the stool. _Impressive._

And when the Sorting Hat took less than a few seconds to sort her into Slytherin, Elisabeth wasn't surprised. A Rosier? The chances were very much in the favor of that House, at least with what Master Ollivander pointed out about that family and their propensity to… atypical magic as seen through the wands choosing them.

Four more students became Ravenclaws. Vivyan Scrimegeor, the girl who had walked into the great hall with her plopped herself down right next to Elisabeth. Alexis Selwyn and Johnathan Whitby followed, then Septimus Zabini sauntered to sit next to Nikodemus Greengrass. The two exchanged a knowing smile with another as the final student, Zeller, Haemon, became a Slytherin. His new house applauded as he took his place, then the room quieted as Dumbledore stood, clapping his hands for the last student.

"Welcome," he said grandly to the quiet room. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. They are **'** Contoodle, honk, and bubbles!'"

Just behind Elisabeth, the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors cheered wildly. The Slytherins clapped politely, but Elisabeth was entertained to see most of the Ravenclaws frowning at the random words as they slowly clapped.

"What d'ya think they mean?" asked David Pond, sitting across from Elisabeth. The food appeared magically on the table

"Dumbledore's speech?" Vivyan Scrimegeor replied, grabbing for food along with the rest of them. "No one knows. My brother Rufus says that they don't mean anything, but my Aunt Sarah wasn't so sure."

"Your brother goes here?" asked Marianne Peakes.

"Mmhmm! He's a seventh year; I'm the baby of the family."

"Wow!" breathed Johnathon Whitby. "I bet you know a lot about this school then. My family doesn't have any magic, so my brothers aren't helpful at all."

Elisabeth noticed that both Melina Greengrass and Selina Nott leaned away slightly at that. Sitting with Septimus Zabini and Nikodemus Greengrass, the four held a conversation in low tones that Elisabeth could only just hear.

"… Mudbloods… school is going to the dogs." She could hear Selina Nott say.

The male Greengrass responded sharply in a low tone. "If you held such views, maybe you should be in Slytherin, Nott."

"Hush!" hissed Zabini said as his voice got quieter. " I'm sure that Nott is… family views… Not…" His voice grew smaller though his tone more insistent and that group shifted closer.

Cocking her head at them, she raised an eyebrow at Greengrass as he looked up angrily from the ongoing discussion. His cousin noticed. Archly, Melina Greengrass spoke loudly, causing the foursomes' conversation to come to a halt. "Something you'd like to say?"

"Actually," piped up a boisterous voice from the other side of Elisabeth. "We were just wondering if you could pass us the pumpkin juice in front of you. Would you be a dear and send it on?"

With a glare, the female Greengrass grabbed the pitcher and thrust it at Elisabeth. With another raised brow at the vehemence of the action, she took it and gave it to Vivyan Scrimegeor.

"Ugh," muttered the other girl, still looking past Elisabeth. "I am not a fan of that girl. Years of being playmates with her, forced on me by my father. She and Selina Nott have been friends for years. What were you doing, listening? Anything interesting come up?"

The words just tumbled out of Scrimageor's mouth. The huge grin and dancing eyes had only curiosity, no judgment, and Elisabeth spoke for the first time. "I'm… not really sure."

"Ah. Not a big deal. I'm Vivyan. Or Viv. Or, you know, you can call me whatever you think'll grab my attention."

"I'm-"

"You're Elisabeth Ollivander. Or that's what that professor called you. What's her name again?" Vivyan paused for a moment.

Elisabeth started, "Mc-"

"McGonagall! That's right. Oh, sorry there. Rufas says I talk over people far too often. To much energy, you know? And I'm quite excited too, so that doesn't help." The tawny haired girl kept chattering. "So Elisabeth, right? Nicknames or anything?"

With a small smile at the girl's antics, Elisabeth replied a bit shyly, "No, not really. Just Elisabeth."

"Not Lisa? Or Elli? Elle? Oh, what about Beth?!" Vivyan grinned. "You seem like a good Beth. Or Betty? No, not Betty. How about-"

"Just Elisabeth." Elisabeth interrupted. She explained, "I'm pretty absentminded, so I have enough troubles answering to my normal name. Florean tells me I get easily absorbed."

"Florean? Who's he? Your brother?" She wrinkled her nose as she asked, "Your boyfriend?"

Elisabeth smiled fondly. "I have three older brothers-" She paused and shuddered as memories of her brothers paraded in her head, but forced herself to continue with fake cheer. "But Florean is more a brother than they are. He is my friend. We live on the same street. He's actually a sixth year Hufflepuff."

"Nice! Rufas is my only brother and he's a pain in my butt." Vivyan, missing the shudder at the thought of her brothers, elbowed Elisabeth gently as the other girl reached for some potatoes. "Hey, will you pass me some too? What d'ya think the common room'll look like? My family's all Gryffs, so they're no help."

"Some of the girls on the Alley-"

"Diagon Alley?"

"Yes-"

"Oh, you must live there right? With Ollivander?"

"Yes. Anyways," she raised an eyebrow to halt Vivyan's opening mouth, ready to release the next torrent of words. "They wouldn't tell me what the different houses were like inside. Something about it being 'part of the experience.' All that stuff older kids say because they want to seem like have so much more knowledge than littler kids like us." She and Vivyan both shook their heads.

"Rufas does the same thing all the time. Roll?"

"Thanks."

"You know," said Marianne Peakes thoughtfully from across the table. "Dumbledore's robes are rather hideous."

Both Vivyan and Elisabeth rolled their eyes as Vivyan dryly replied, "Yes. Yes, they really are."

 **AN:**

 _ *** A two fingered salute: AKA the British version of the middle finger.**_

 _ **** The description of the hall is based off of Pottermore's drawings, because they are accurate to the book. I default to the book rather than the movie for this story, just so you know.**_


	3. Chapter 3: The Nest

**Year One: 1971**

 **Chapter Three: The Nest**

It wasn't until Dumbledore stood to address and dismiss the hall that Elisabeth realized what time it was. Chatting with Vivyan was a bit novel; with just brothers and parents when she was home ( _No, that's not home anymore. Home is… not that…. Anymore._ )… Compared with Master Ollivander at home, talking to a girl with so much energy was different. Of course, engaging in conversation the Muggle raised half-blood David Pond and Muggleborn Johnathon Whitby was also a unique experience. Since both Vivyan and Elisabeth were traditional purebloods, the Muggle experiences were quite fascinating. The discussion had begun with Dumbledore's robe choice: a stunningly florescent shade of purple with red-orange Muggle flying machines on them

"So these 'planes', how do they stay up?" questioned Vivyan intently as the first year Ravenclaws stood to follow the prefects. Elisabeth tried not to trip over her robes as she stepped over the bench to the walkway.

"Ummm, I think physics has something to do with it." Answered Pond, quirking his head sideways. "But, you know, I'm not actually certain. Perhaps…"

"I think the wing shape keeps it up." Whitby added with a frown.

As the group moved en masse to the front doors of the Hall, Nott stopped, turned, and spoke loudly to the foursome. "Muggles. Had to do something to compensate for their lack of magic."

Pond, Whitby, and Vivyan all glared at her. The people standing on the aisles from both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff both quieted for a few moments and stared; young as they might be, the statement mirrored the talk of the guerrilla group known as the Death Eaters. Most found it startling to be coming out of the mouth of an eleven year old. The Greengrass cousins and Zabini visibly stepped back. Even Elisabeth was surprised at Selina Nott's venomous words. A very public statement that bordered the new Dark Lord's opinion….

But Nikodemus Greengrass pasted on a smile and tossed a careless arm over Zabini's shoulders on Nott's far left. "So, what think you of the Monrose Magpies this season? Any chance of the championship?."

As Nott opened her mouth angrily, William Chambers spoke up from the aisle opposite. "No, not at all. It's pretty obvious that the Chudley Cannons-"

"Like the Cannon's will ever have a shot," an upper year Hufflepuff inserted.

And then the tension began to diffuse. Most of the boys and a few girls became embroiled in a debate on Quidditch teams. Greengrass and Will exchanged glances before the first boy's cousin, Melina Greengrass, steered a furious Selina Nott away. Vivyan hissed threats under her breath as she watch the two rejoin Nikodemus Greengrass and Septimus Zabini. Elisabeth just watched the foursome walk away. Tugging on Vivyan's sleeve, she spoke up enough to not only gain Vivyan's attention, but also that of the other first year Ravenclaws as well. "I think those two prefects are waiting to show us to our dormitory."

"Oy, you lot!" called the male prefect, right on time. "Come on now!"

The first years tumbled over themselves to join the prefects near the Great Hall's entrance. The female prefect gave them a smile as she led them towards the exit. "Alright, so Eric and I will be taking you up to the Ravenclaw Tower. It's a secret entrance so no other house can know where it is. That said, follow closely. It's easy to get lost-"

"-Evans is one of us now, so you can slither back to your house or burrow or whatever you call it." A loud voice interrupted the prefect. It came from the Potter boy, who stood solidly in the middle of the huge doorframe. His comment was directed at a poorly dressed first year Slytherin, robes worn and with a few holes in pockets already. A red headed Gryffindor girl stood next to the Slytherin boy with the huge nose and greasy hair, her clothing a contrast to his in its new and pressed state. The girl stepped forward, practically spitting out her words.

"Excuse me, but who do you think you are, James Potter? You are nasty and cruel. I don't care who you think you are, but you are a hypocrite. You sit around calling Slytherins evil bullies, but that is exactly what you are!"

"I am not a hypogriff! Do you see any feathers on me?" Potter looked genuinely confused at her insult. Elisabeth and most of the Ravenclaws raised their eyebrows at Potter's idiocy.

"She said hypocrite, it means someone who contradicts their stated beliefs," a soft-spoken lanky boy who was standing next to Black explained to Potter. He murmured a few more words that Elisabeth couldn't hear before Potter glared at him. The quieter boy winced and looked hesitantly and nervously at the crowd growing around them.

Black stepped up with a smirk, speaking loudly. "Yeah, I agree with Lupin back here. Maybe we haven't gotten a chance to properly introduce ourselves to you." As he spoke, Elisabeth saw something exchange his and Potter's hands. "Let's start over, I'm Sirius Black." He grabbed the Slytherin's hand before the other boy could pull away.

With a sneer, the other boy extracted his hand from the other's grasp. "Severus Snape."

"I suppose you're right Black, my apologies to Snape. My name's James Potter." The superiority in Potter's voice made both Elisabeth and the Slytherin instantly on edge. _Sounds like one of my brothers before they prank me,_ thought Elisabeth. She winced at the thought of her brothers and tried to focus solely on the argument before her.

As Potter stuck his hand to shake the wary Snape's, the red headed girl realized the disingenuous nature of the boys' apologies and went to push his hand away before Snape's could be shaken. She had brushed Potter's hand when suddenly,

"POTTER!"

Green slime went everywhere, covering not only the girl Gryffindor and Snape, but also sloshing bits of slime on to Eric the male prefect, Vivyan, Will, and Elisabeth. A few Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and Gryffindors chuckled. Inspecting the green goo on her right arm, Elisabeth tilted her head. She recognized it as an exploding slime shaker, a Zonko's trick that caused an unsuspecting person to be covered in slime the second they made contact with the activation button. Elisabeth guessed the red head had accidentally triggered the slime bomb, causing both her and Snape to be instantly covered with green slime.

Snape instinctively pulled his wand from his pocket and brandished it at Potter.

"Stop this immediately!" An angry Professor McGonagall was striding over to the slime covered students and their laughing classmates. A stunned Prefect Eric wiped, distressed, at his robes as his fellow prefect cast a cleaning spell or two between giggles. "Miss Evans, Mister Snape, I think it would be best if you headed up to the hospital wing to get de-slimed. That amount of slime won't go away easily. Madame Pomfrey will have you sorted out in no time. I'll take you in just a moment. AS FOR YOU BOYS! I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYONE, MUCH LESS FROM MY OWN HOUSE, GET IN TROUBLE AS FAST AS YOU TWO HAVE…"

A diminutive teacher with a long white beard guided the group of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuff away from the scene. He squeaked at them, "Off you go now! Time to head to your dorms."

"Professor Flitwick, my… my robes… They… I…" A stuttering Eric tried to communicate his concerns to the teacher as his fellow prefect and most of the Ravenclaw first years giggled at his expense.

With a few flicks of his wand, the professor returned Eric to his previous condition, and noticed the three first years with green goop adornments. While Elisabeth had escaped had escaped with just a sleeve covered in the stuff, Vivyan had gotten a good amount in her hair and Will's left cheek and upper shoulder were drenched. While Elisabeth was inspecting the goo like it was a bizarre creature and Will was casually dumping green gunk on the floor, Vivyan was flicking it in Selina Nott's direction with a vicious smirk. The other girl had yet to notice.

The tiny man chuckled before a few more waves of his wand took care of the slime. Vivyan pouted as a particularly large amount of goo never made it to its intended target. With a wink at the tawny-haired girl, the professor turned away, leaving behind an unknowing Nott with green speckles all over her backside.

A pouting Eric began to walk away in front the first year students, muttering something about "that bloody infernal rivalry that _never_ ends up well for everyone else." They followed him, still snickering over the green slime. The female prefect followed up behind the group, casually chatting with Professor Flitwick about her upcoming OWLS.

While Elisabeth was interested in the spells spouting out of the prefect's mouth, she couldn't help yawning. The day seemed so long at this point. She figured the boy was probably meant to be telling them about what they were passing, giving directions to common areas like classrooms, but if she was tired, she supposed he must have been as well.

Will and Elisabeth yawned in unison as Elisabeth caught her foot on some stray air and stumbled into him. He gave her a tentative smile as he stabilized her and they walked on, beginning their ascent up (what they would soon find out was only the first of many) stairs.

"Hey, look at that." Vivyan poked Elisabeth in the side. The girl pointed out the window as the two paused on the side of the corridor; they had been steadily climbing the castle stairs until they had reached the fifth floor and they now had a stunning view over the lake under them. Lights from Hogsmeade shone steadily from outside the Hogwarts grounds. Both girls smiled at each other.

"I love heights, you know," mentioned Vivyan offhandedly as she huffed and puffed up the stairs. "Something about being on the top of the world. Free, no expectations. That's why I love Quidditch, you know? Just to be…"

"Yeah," responded Elisabeth, breathing just as quickly, shoving her inky masses of hair behind her shoulders. They stood in silence as the last of the first years past them. "Me too." A moment later, she added offhandedly. "Except the broomstick part. I'm extraordinarily good at falling off."

Vivyan gave a great belly laugh between gasps of air then added, "Bloody stairs."

"Come on girls," squeaked their head of house. "Almost there." With that, the female prefect, the two girls, and Professor Flitwick climbed a spiraling staircase even higher. Turing to see a platform around the bend, both Vivyan and Elisabeth sighed in relief. But when they saw the stairs continue even further, they both made identical faces.

The prefect chuckled. "Almost there. I promise." They continued up the steps, finally catching up with the main group in front of a set of double doors with an eagle shaped knocker on the front. Elisabeth noticed neither had a door knob. The female prefect moved up towards the front of the group, saying over a shoulder to the pair, "Just think; over the next seven years you get to climb those steps while carrying your entire bookbag."

Elisabeth and Vivyan were not the only first years to groan at this. Eric, the male prefect spoke up, still a bit glum. "Unlike all the other houses, we have no portrait and password to enter the Ravenclaw Tower. Instead, we have this eagle on our door who will ask you a riddle. Our Founder, Rowena Ravenclaw, prized learning above all else, and so the knocker will test your ability to learn, innovate, and think every time you wish to come in.

"No matter how long you have been a Ravenclaw, you will at some point not be able to guess an answer," He continued. "Don't worry about it; some of the most entertaining times I've had with Ravenclaws from other years is when we are stuck in a group of twenty or more out here on the platform and down the steps. The riddles aren't easy on purpose, but don't look at them like they are a pain. They are a challenge and any good Ravenclaw should love a challenge."

"Note that some riddles have many answers," added Professor Flitwick. He chuckled lightly. "And although I have a sense of humor, the knocker does not and however spectacular your pun is, the eagle head will not let you in."

"Now," the female fifth year took up teaching the first years. "Because it can at times prove to be difficult to get in, Eric and I suggest that you double check that you have everything before you leave the dorms every morning. You never know how long will take to get in and telling someone like Professor McGonagall-"

"The Transfiguration teacher who is also the head of Gryffindor House. You met her just before your Sorting," interrupted Eric.

"Yes, telling her you couldn't guess the password to find your text books won't work as an excuse; she won't even hesitate to take points off. Now then," she turned to the door and knocked on it firmly. "This is how you get the riddle."

The bronze eagle became animated and said:

"Two bodies have I,

Though both joined in one.

The more I stand still,

The faster I run.

What am I?"

As the knocker stilled again, Eric guessed. "An infinity snake?"

Abstractly, his counterpart disagreed. "They don't really go faster, do they?"

"And they aren't joined as one…" Flitwick added with a slight frown.

Eric didn't defend his idea, instead leaning against the wall as he thought. Will Chambers from the other side of the room asked, "Can we hear it again?"

The prefects nodded and Eric rapped on the door again. Again it said:

"Two bodies have I,

Though both joined in one.

The more I stand still,

The faster I run.

What am I?"

All the first years thought. More ideas spilled out of the first years, gaining both in volume and intensity. Elisabeth felt like the answer was rather simple; after all, it had two conjoined bodies that were distinctly separate, yet still one. It its self was not mobile, but that just meant that something ran through it. She spoke up, looking directly at the knocker.

"An hourglass."

The knocker nodded once at her before the doors both opened. Professor Flitwick looked at the tiny girl in delight. "Excellent, excellent! Good work there!"

As the two prefects led the group into the Common Room, Vivyan draped an arm over Elisabeth's shoulder. "I am never going anywhere without you. I would never have guessed that riddle."

"Me either," said Will as he walked into the room with them. He scrunched his pudgy face. "I'm bloody awful with things like that." Sticking his hand in Vivyan's direction, he introduced himself. "Will Chambers."

"Vivyan Scrimageour." She shook his hand before gesturing in Elisabeth's direction. "And this is-"

"Elisabeth Ollivander. I had the pleasure of her company on the boats." Will smiled at Elisabeth, who was paying the two little attention.

*The doors had opened into a loft that stretched across half the circular tower, overlooking another room just below, and the students stepped onto hardwood floors. To their right was a board of school notices and several tables, each table with its own light source and several lightly padded chairs, clearly not intended to be comfortable but to be functional. A single fireplace bisected the railing of the loft and held a roaring fire. Rich midnight blue rugs covered parts of the floor. Windows looked out on each part of the wall, revealing what looked like greenhouses down below the tower on one side, Hogsmeade on another, and in a third the Quidditch Pitch. Each had heavy blue curtains, meant to be drawn when the sun was too bright. The cream colored walls had many portraits of important and knowledgeable witches and wizards on them who peered curiously at the incoming first years.

Ignoring the two prefects who had begun another monologue, Elisabeth walked across the loft to look into the room below it. Like the upper area, it too had many windows, but these one stretched from the floor until the windows peaked twenty feet up, showing off proudly the Quidditch Pitch on out the windows on the left and Hogsmeade Village out the ones on the right. Heavy deep blue curtains framed each one. The sight mesmerized Elisabeth. _I always did love heights_ , she thought and sighed contentedly. The ceiling was midnight blue and had constellations that rotated above, looking similar to the ceiling in the Great Hall; Elisabeth could see the stars that would be present tonight already on the ceiling.

Vivyan grabbed her elbow as the group passed her by, heading down the stairs along the left hand wall. Steering her so that Elisabeth followed her fellow first years, Vivyan whispered, "This is so much better than what Rufas says the Gryffindor Tower looks like."

Descending the steps to the circular room below, Elisabeth couldn't help but agree. _There is no place that could be as beautiful as this._

"This is the Nest. We call this area here that because it is meant to be a place where another home can be found, one where no one judges anyone else on wanting to discover the true meaning of the Wampleburg beetles' migrational habits or some such thing. This is the second highest tower in the castle, but is hidden so that not even we Eagles can see which tower is ours from the outside." Eric-the-prefect continued, gesturing to the cozy sitting area that filled half the lower room. Light cream carpets covered the floor, with richly decorated deep blue, bronze, and black rugs pulling conversational areas together; small well-cushioned couches and pudgy armchairs formed intimate groups that several upper years sat in, chatting about their summers. Other chairs sat alone, meant for solitary thoughts. A particularly populous grouping sat at the base of a large statue of Rowena Ravenclaw in the center of the room. Another fire sat happily crackling under her feet, set into her pedestal. Elisabeth realized that the fire in the level above must have been set into her back.

But behind her, in the other half of the room?

Books.

So many books.

"Wow," she breathed. A full library sat there with more study tables, chairs, and a ladder or two to reach the top shelves. Again, hard wood adorned the floor with rugs under each study table. Bookshelves were set not only into the other half circle of the outer wall, but also pointed a few feet into the room, creating alcoves of books. Elisabeth was now certain that she had found the Wizarding version of Muggle Heaven.

"Wow indeed," replied second year Zacharias O'Toole of the Apothecary dryly from a chair to her left. Drawing her attention to himself, he smirked. "I won five Knuts off you by the way."

She looked at him questioningly, taking a step closer to him and away from the two prefects who were explaining… She paused for a second. _What are they talking about?_

"I knew you would be a Ravenclaw, but Marrissa Malkin was certain you would be a Hufflepuff." He grinned rakishly at her, ignoring her momentary drift into another thought. "You know you are missing the whole intro thing that Eric and Melissa are giving, right?

"Melissa?" she asked as she started yanking her recalcitrant hair into some semblance of order.

He raised an eyebrow at her, then sighed. "I forget how you can track a whole room's worth of events and still miss the most simple things. Don't worry about all that stuff," he gestured at the two prefects. "They are basically saying that boys live up through the door on the left and girls on the right and not to try to enter the other gender's door." He smirked. "I saw a fourth year do it; he was stuck with donkey ears for two week and not even Madam Pomfrey, the school nurse could get them off. It is said that Rowena herself charmed the doors."

"What doors?"

He pointed to a library alcove to the far right. She was surprised to see part of the bookshelf _chime_ a soft warning before swinging open to reveal a rowdy group of boys and a staircase going down. "They're hidden. It's apparently a security feature left from when the Headmistress in the fourteenth century was worried about the witch burnings and wanted to protect her former house. Anyways, the girls' door is over on the other side."

Elisabeth just had time to nod before a tawny-haired ball of energy bowled right into her, only pure luck keeping them both upright. Vivyan righted herself of Elisabeth's shoulder, already chatting away. "Did you hear Melissa? She says that the girl's dorms go _even higher_ in the air! That's so awesome. Who's this?"

"The boy's dorms go down," added Will as he walked over. "Good thing too; Jonathan Whitby and David Pond looked nauseous just from looking out the windows here in the Nest."

"Shush, Will! Who're you?" Vivyan interrupted the boy with a curious look at Zacharias.

"I'm-" he began.

"Zacharias O'Toole. He's on the Alley with me. Come on now, Melissa-that's her name, right?- she's headed off somewhere." Elisabeth dragged the other girl off in the direction of the female prefect, leaving Will and Zacharias behind abruptly.

O'Toole grinned at the other boy, as the girls tripped away. "You get used to it, you know? The long silences and then the abrupt torrent of words, usually about something totally off topic. Ollivander is nutty just like her great uncle, but at least she doesn't mutter like him. Yet."

As Elisabeth stumbled over to the prefect, she saw Will smile in return. The prefect had just opened another secret door the far left side of the library. A winding staircase led upwards and the other girls of their year had begun ascending the steps after the talking prefect. Both Elisabeth and Vivyan scampered over to the door and followed the echoing whispers of their yearmates up. Five doorways later, they stopped in a large group. Melissa the prefect opened the door and walked in.

"This will be your one of your dorm for the next seven years; that is, assuming you make it through them all." Marianne Peakes started at this and looked worried, while Selina Nott and Vivyan just rolled their eyes. "You'll notice that there are only four beds here; the next door we go to is the other first year dorm. We have a policy of no more than four to a room because once that size is exceeded, the ability to study in a room is significantly less. I have a list here, let's see, of who will be in this room. Amelia Bones, Selina Nott, Marianne Peakes, and Alexis Selwyn are in here, while Zoe Carmicheal, Melina Greengrass, Elisabeth Ollivander, and Vivyan Scrimegeor are in the other."

Vivyan excitedly began tugging on Elisabeth's robes and began to open her mouth. Amelia Bones stepped on her foot with a look clearly saying _Shut up_.

Melissa continued. "You each have a dresser and a desk. Notice the brazier in the middle? The heating charms on the Tower take a beating in the winter and even warming charms only do so much. This high in the air, the wind is harsh, so have your family send you a lot of jumpers and quilts for later this year. Those curtains over your bed are spelled to keep the noises from either side out of the rest of the space, since you can't cast a silencing spell yet. Alright you lot, anyone not in this room, come with me. Those of you who are staying, you share a bathroom with the floor above you and the floor beneath you and it is one level up; since we have mixed age groups, the bathroom will be shared with the fifth years and the second years. Lights out at nine since you are firsties, with them flickering at ten 'til and steadily dimming until the hour. Any noise that I have to come here and tell you to shut up, I will dock you points. Come on then."

The remaining four first years followed her up even more flights of stairs. Everyone of them was huffing and puffing before they finally reached the last door in the whole tower. Melissa gasped out, "I swear, any of you all make me trek up here for silence and I will dock you all the bloody points _and_ assign you detention with Filch."

As the four girls tumbled in the room, they nodded assent, gulping down large breaths of air. Even Vivyan seemed to have no breath for words. Elisabeth was the first to recover and was drawn to the bed furthest from the door. Like the rest, it was set into the wall with heavy blue curtains one could draw over the alcove, creating a semblance of privacy. The wardrobe was set into the wall on its right and the desk was set so that the side was against the wall, most of it sticking into the middle where the brazier and four large trunks sat. But Elisabeth didn't notice these things; the window set into the wall behind her bed was what caught her attention; a stunning view of the twinkling Hogsmeade lights and the light from the moon reflecting off the loch made a breath-taking picture. The Forbidden Forest was off to the left and the path to the village shone white against the dark grounds.

"This one is mine," she said as she plopped onto the bed and shed her robe.

Vivyan, sprawled on the floor to gain her breathe, protested wheezily. "Not fair! That one has the best view!"

"If you wanted a good view, you should have claimed it first," responded the prefect, holding her side and breathing heavily. "Besides, the one next to it still sees Hogsmeade Village and the one on the other side has a view of the Quidditch Pitch."

There was a mad scramble as Vivyan and Greengrass both lunged for the bed with a view of the Pitch. With Melissa as the referee, Vivyan's bellyflop onto the bed proved to be more of a claim than the finger Melina Greengrass may or may not have had on it before the flying Vivyan landed with a thump, disrupting the order of the cream and blue bed linens. Zoe Carmicheal stood out of the way as Melina Greengrass stomped off to the bed with the view of the village on Elisabeth's left and took the last one to Elisabeth's right that looked out on the loch and the Forbidden Forest.

With one last warning not to make noise and a quick note that the bathroom was one floor down and shared between them and the fifth year girls, the prefect whisked out of the room, leaving four new roommates eying one another.

Or rather two glaring at each other and two attempting to avoid the possibility of a conflict.

Elisabeth was drawn to the window and the twinkly lights, amazed by the height at which they were at. She had just settled her arms and chin atop the window sill before another person bounced onto her bed, jarring her. Vivyan grinned, jumping a few more times on Elisabeth's bed. "Isn't this awesome?!" Vivyan grinned at the other girl. "We get to be dorm mates!"

"I take it you two know each other," came the nasty comment from their left. Hopping right off the bed, Vivyan glared at Melina Greengrass.

"So what if we do?"

"Is she even a pureblood, Scrimageor? Or just more riff raff with the claim to an old name like your other friends?"

"She's Ollivander's apprentice, Greengrass." Vivyan rolled her eyes and attempted to ignore the girl, grabbing her trunk and yanking it across to her bed.

Sniffing at the tiny girl still curled on her bed, Greengrass dragged her trunk to her part of the room. "Doesn't mean anything. We all know how batty old Ollivander has gotten-"

"Master Ollivander is NOT batty! He is merely _eccentric_. Brilliant. Clever. Even a bit silly at times, but he is _not_ BATTY!" Elisabeth now glared at Melina Greengrass, standing up with her wand gripped tightly in her small hand as she hissed at the other girl. Never mind that she didn't know how to _use_ the thing, she would bludgeon the Greengrass girl with the wooden stick if she didn't shut up. _Master Ollivander took me in when I had nowhere to go,_ she thought furiously. _NO ONE insults him when I am around_.

Greengrass eyed her wand and addressed her for the first time. "Fine. He's not batty. Are you a pureblood?"

"What does it matter?" Vivyan said with a last attempt to make the conversation disappear.

Elisabeth gently laid the want on her bed and sat back down, still warily eying the brunette girl. She wasn't ever prone to anger, but talking of her master that way was NOT acceptable. She sighed. _I never get angry at people like that. It must be because of how many times today I've thought of my family- no, don't think about them, I don't have them as my family anymore…_

"Well, I'm not sharing a room with a girl who has no family to speak of." Greengrass didn't notice Elisabeth's wince, though Vivyan gave the wild haired girl a curious look. "Besides, you may even invite her to the Pureblood Ball in December and she can't go if she isn't one."

"First of all, it's the Greengrass Ball, not the Pureblood Ball. The main family doesn't like that term-" Vivyan started.

"Just because my aunt and uncle don't have any sense doesn't mean that the name isn't apt. Only purebloods are invited." Greengrass interrupted with a superior look in Elisabeth's direction. Tossing robes out of her trunk, she sighed in disgust. "We have house elves to do this for us at home."

"Second of all," Vivyan continued with a glare. "I will make friends with whomever I please, not matter what blood they have. Muggleborn aurors have saved lives too-"

"Whatever, you muggle-lover." With a last disgusted look at the robes now littering her part of the room, Greengrass stood. She grabbed her toiletries from the trunk and stomped off to the door. "I'm going to brush my teeth and use the WC."

The three other girls watched her go. Vivyan sighed, a bit tiredly. "Merlin, she annoys me."

"I am a pureblood. Just so you know." Elisabeth muttered just loud enough for the others to hear her. "But it's just Master Ollivander and I. I-I don't have any other family." She looked sadly out of the window. "He does, but I don't."

Vivyan and Zoe Carmicheal shared a look. "Not that it matters to me, Elisabeth." Vivyan said, turning back to the part of the room that had turned into a war ground. Tossing even more things on the floor, she continued, "Scrimageors have already taken sides in this war. I don't think bloodlines should matter and neither does my family."

Zoe Carmicheal nodded. "My family is just trying to stay out of this. I thought I was a muggleborn, but it turns out that both my parents are squibs and that our family takes huge security measures when they come to visit so that we aren't in danger. Mum and Da say that it might be best just to stay quiet on your origins."

"Not that that matters," added Vivyan. "All it takes to be pureblood is to have wizards three generations back."

Melina Greengrass heard Vivyan and glared at her as she re-entered the room. "But a _real_ pureblood is someone who doesn't have a single muggle in their family line, like mine or even Scrimageor. A family like yours, Carmicheal, isn't a real pureblooded family. They are just pretenders grasping on straws and you and your parents are practically as bad as a muggleborn and its parents." With that nasty comment tossed over her shoulder, Greengrass headed over to her bed. Drawing the curtains over her bed, she tossed out a threat to anyone who woke her.

Elisabeth, Vivyan, and Zoe Carmicheal exchanged glances. Vivyan spoke up quietly, wrinkling her nose at the closed curtains. "She sounds like she wishes us anything _but_ a good night."

The other two nodded in agreement as Vivyan crawled into bed, clothes and all. She was swiftly asleep. A half hour later, the lights dimming, the two other girls, clothes put away and books stacked on the shelves within the bed alcoves at both the head and foot of the bed, sleepily said their goodnights and pulled the curtains.

 _A blood purist roommate, prankster Gryffindors, and an entirely too energetic first friend,_ Elisabeth though sleepily as she rolled to peek out the window. She yawned. _Tomorrow should be interesting. This next week- well, even this next year should be absolutely fascinating…_

 ***I am not following the Pottermore description of the common room, as you may have noticed. There is an amazing version that was created several years before the description in the 7** **th** **book was released and this has always been what I considered to be the common room for the Eagles. If you want to see the excellent drawings of this, go look at art/ Ravenclaw-Tower-277820431 . Just note that I also added a tower above to house the girls whereas the original artists had housing only below (but that would have put the common room 14 stories plus five more in the sky and that is just cruel and unusual punishment for the witches and wizards who just forgot a parchment due in class). I also changed the large stone column that the fireplace is set into so that it is now the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Wisdom Over Ambition**

 **AN: A long chapter, sorry. I'm a bit of a nerd so I couldn't help but go into spell dynamics and some side conversations explaining my take on Wizarding life.**

"Beth! Elisa!" cried a voice from the direction of the Great Hall's entrance. Sitting across from Will Chambers and next to Zoe Carmicheal, Elisabeth Ollivander was focused completely on the ceiling to the point where she had yet to notice that her oatmeal was dripping onto Carmichael's lap. Carmichael and Will had both been attempting to point this out for the past several minutes with no luck; instead Carmichael had scooted further away, wiping at her skirt.

 _Thunk_.

"There you two are!" cried Vivyan exasperatedly, dropping her school bag on the bench and plopping down next to it. "Oh, hi Will. Can you believe that these two left me with that harpy, Greengrass? Her snores finally woke me up. Oy, Ellie-day-dreamer there! Hello?"

"We've tried getting Ollivander's attention already," Carmichael grumbled as Vivyan waved her hand between Elisabeth and the oatmeal. Elisabeth didn't acknowledge her presence any more than she had the others, only batting the hand out of her view of a particular section of the ceiling.

Will chuckled. "She had been staring at the ceiling since we entered the Great Hall. I'm not sure what fascination she has with it, but she hasn't gotten a bite of food in her mouth yet."

The normally good-natured Carmichael shot a glare at the oblivious girl. "Yeah, instead she dumped them all in my lap. I'm headed back up to change before classes. Hopefully I won't get lost; the three of us followed a set of sixth years to get down here." She began to get up, but stumbled over the bench. A large hand caught her shoulder.

With a chuckle, Florean Fortescue righted the first year. "Careful there. Almost as clumsy as this one here." He gestured at Elisabeth. He tapped her shoulder gently. "Elisabeth? Alright there?"

Will grimaced. "We tried that-"

"Florean! Have you seen the ceiling?" Elisabeth responded excitedly, glancing right into Florean's face before shifting herself to follow a cloud scurrying across the room. He grabbed his second toppling first year of the day and pushed her back onto the bench as she continued mumbling about the ceiling.

Will muttered something about _"Ollivanders and mumbling about random things under their breath just like Zach O'Toole had said... Thought he said she wasn't that batty yet…"_

"Careful there, Elisabeth. Yes, I've seen it every day I've been here for the past six years." he smiled at the small girl.

Carmichael looked at the older boy in awe. "You have got to tell me how you did that," she said with a grateful smile. "She has been dumping oatmeal over me for the past ten minutes."

He chortled and waved his wand at her. " _Scourgify_. She's like that. She's been on the Alley three months now and I have yet to get her to focus on more than one thing at a time. If she is staring at the ceiling," he pointed at Elisabeth, who still seemed to be muttering comments under her breath to a nonexistent audience. "Then she won't be doing anything but staring at the ceiling. You should see her attempt to walk and read at the same time."

He pantomimed a person walking a step or two, stopping, flipping pages in a pretend book, and taking another two steps. The three first year Eagles giggled at the sixth year. Another giggling voice joined in. "What are you doing there, Florean?"

"Copying you and your book reading, Miss Elisabeth," he responded flippantly. At her raised eyebrow, he shrugged, grinned, and changed the topic. "But I originally came over here to save your dorm mate from your oatmeal flinging-"

"Who was flinging oatmeal?" she interrupted, digging her spoon into the offending dish.

Carmichael eyed her warily as the spoon rose to her mouth. "You were."

"Me? I'm sorry. Why didn't you say anything?" Blithely ignoring Will and Vivyan's chuckles and Carmichael's steadily reddening face, she stirred the oatmeal with one hand as the other attempted to tame her unruly long hair. "What else were you doing over here, Florean?"

"Just checking up on you." He muttered the Scouring Spell at the space between Zoe and Elisabeth before settling into it. "How is Ravenclaw? Do you like your dorm? Your dorm mates? Are they high up? I know you love heights."

"What he is really asking, Elisabeth, is where is the entrance to the Ravenclaw dorms. It's the only common room that he has yet to enter," Arista Golken called to the pair as she walked down the aisle from the direction of the Gryffindor table.

"Would I do that, Arista? Ask a little first year Ravenclaw to spill the secrets of her fellow Eagles?" Florean grinned impishly.

"Yes," chorused several voices, both from the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables next to each other. A passing second year Slytherin glared at him and commented under his breath to his yearmate that Fortesque was trickier than half the Slytherins*, to which his fellow Slytherin raised a mocking, disbelieving brow. Eric-the-prefect grinned at Florean's obvious lack of shame. "Get out of here," he said good-naturedly. "The professors are handing out schedules. You too Arista, though it is lovely to see you. How was your summer?"

"Fine. Met little Elisabeth here; she's new on the Alley. Take care of her, will you? We'll catch up later." she responded with a smile, tugging Florean away from the giggling first years.

A grandiose sweep of his arm and his assurances that he would, Eric waved as two interlopers walked off to their appropriate tables. The prefect motioned the other first years who had wandered down from the dorms over to the small group already sitting. "Professor Flitwick will be handing out the schedules to the first years first, then go from seventh on down. That way you all can have more time to get lost and then found before your first class and the older years can grab their supplies for that day's NEWT lessons."

They nodded, seeing the tiny professor stepping down from his seat at the front of the room. The heavy boy nudged Vivyan from across the table and they both looked at Elisabeth who was paying them no attention at all. A developing storm had begun in the southwest corner of the ceiling and she was raptly staring at it, muttering all the while. "Oy, Ollivander," he called out to her. "Ollivander."

Again the two looked at each other. Will shrugged, giving a tired smile to Professor Flitwick as he approached and handed him his schedule. He smiled hello as he called out names. The professor went down the list until: "Greengrass, Melina?"

Vivyan looked around. "I think she is still asleep in the dorms. She was sleeping away there not twenty minutes ago. Snores like a dragon keeper, that one…"

Selina Nott glared at the other girl on her ally's behalf, but both Septimus Zabini and Nikodemus Greengrass snickered a bit. Vivyan winked at them as they sat down next to the quartet, waiting for their schedules. Will whispered quietly to Vivyan as Flitwick looked up and down the table for the missing girl. "Those two are surprisingly decent. They are both in my dorm, along with Entwhistle and Whitby. You know, the Muggleborn? I mean, they weren't chummy, but they didn't treat him like he was a piece of dirt. Just mutual distance from both sides."

Vivyan was a bit surprised at that. "Huh. With families like theirs… I expected differently."

"Me too," he nodded, then gave her a meaningful glance. "Elisabeth is next."

"Ollivander, Elisabeth?" called out the professor just then. The girl in question looked down from the ceiling towards the person who called her name.

As the professor gave her her schedule, Vivyan gaped at the tiny man, then turned to Will. "He… How did he..? Wait, what?!"

Zoe Carmicheal snapped her fingers as he called out the next name on the list. "That's it!" She turned to the dark haired girl. "Elisabeth?"

The littler girl looked up from her schedule. "Yes?"

She was ignored by the other three. Vivyan demanded, "How did you do it?"

"Do what?" asked the confused Elisabeth.

"She only responds to her name!" Carmichael said excitedly.

"Who, me?" Elisabeth tried again, attempting to understand the other first years and their excitement.

"But we tried that," protested Will. "We called out Ollivander-"

"No, Elisabeth!"

"What?" she asked, staring at the others with the most perplexed look on her face.

"Oh! That makes sense." Will nodded his head.

"What makes sense?" asked Vivyan, still not tracking.

"She only responds to her first name, right Elisabeth?" Carmichael and Will looked at her eagerly, wanting a conformation to their hypothesis. Vivyan looked like she had finally attained understanding.

She eyed them a bit warily. "Yes? I'm not sure what else I would respond to. It is my given name…"

"Yes," said a voice, surprising them all. Nikodemus Greengrass leaned across the table, snagging a kipper from a platter, as he continued. "But we all answer to other things. Like Zabini here; his sisters and mum call him Timmy, a shortened version of Septimus. But I wouldn't call him that or even Septimus because I just met him and he hasn't given me permission to call him by his first or familiar names-"

"You will never get permission to call me Timmy," muttered the scowling boy, glaring at four girls who sat at the Slytherin table. Elisabeth guessed they were likely the sisters mentioned.

"So I call out to him as Zabini, his family name." Greengrass continued as though he hadn't been interrupted. "Like I'm guessing Chambers here did to you when he was trying to get your attention." Will nodded an affirmation. "You, on the other hand, only answer to Elisabeth."

"Yeah," added in Vivyan. "I called you Ellie, Beth, and…"

"Elisa," helped out Will.

"Yup, Elisa too, but you never answered to any of them." Now Zabini, the male Greengrass, Will, Vivyan, and Carmichael all looked at her expectantly.

She quirked a brow at them and shrugged. "I'm… sorry? My parents-" her mouth tightened and she changed her mind about what she was about to say. A fake smile plastered on her face, she continued, "Master Gerrick isn't big on names. He introduces me to most wizards as 'Baltic Sea Pine wand that was particularly bendy with a Dragon Heartstring core from Austria', or some variation thereof. Call me Elisabeth."

Will and Zabini both grinned, while Greengrass, Vivyan, and Carmichael all chuckled, not taking notice of her slip. The muggle-raised Carmichael turned to Will. "So assume that everyone is referred to by their last name not their first? I should call you Chambers, and, Vivyan, you Scrimegeor?"

Vivyan laughed as Will wrinkled his nose. "No," he said. "There are almost twenty of my relatives at this school since the Chambers family is so large; go ahead and call me by my given name." Gesturing towards the whole group, he added, "You all too. Propriety has never been a big thing for me."

"Me either." Vivyan smiled at Carmichael. "Scrimegeor sounds like a disease, don't you think? Besides, Rufus, my brother, is Scrimegeor. I don't want to be his little sister; I'd rather just be me."

"Then I'm Zoe. Raised in the muggle world, I don't have any idea on most wizarding manners anyways." Zoe Carmichael nodded at them.

Selina Nott, bored of the topic and of being ignored, butted into the conversation. "Zabini, Greengrass, did you two see our schedules? Double Potions this morning, which is fine, but then Defense Against the Dark Arts with the Hufflepuffs after lunch and Charms after that with the Gryffindors? Ugh."

The two boys exchanged glances. Zabini shrugged. "Could be worse." Glancing down at his schedule, he cringed. "It is worse. Double History on Tuesdays, so tomorrow afternoon." He groaned and looked over at the other four. "My mom told me all about Binns, the teacher. Apparently, he has been here longer than Professor Dumbledore. The most boring ghost you will ever meet, he is. And apparently, he has an obsession with the Goblin Rebellions. All twenty two of them."

"Because _that's_ so useful to know." Vivyan rolled her eyes. Will, Zoe, and Selina Nott all nodded along with her.

"It is actually," piped up Elisabeth. Everyone but Nikodemus Greengrass looked at her like she had several heads. "But it is!" she cocked her head at them, curious why they didn't see the obvious connection. "They run our monetary system. So understanding why the galleon to knut ratio is always 1 to 492, verses why a Muggle exchange for a galleon** is 2.75 pounds sterling, but fluctuates pretty regularly is very important. It's all based on the six hundred and seventy four treaties the British Ministry has signed with them over the course of the twenty two wars and one thousand forty six scuffles and minor territory concessions."

At this point, most of them were just looking at her confusedly. The male Greengrass nodded however. "I think it's one thousand four hundred and six actually. But she's right; each time another agreement is signed, a different twist to the exchange rate or modification to vault security is renegotiated due to the particular nature of each argument. For merchants like the Ollivander's-"

"Artisans," she interrupted, professional pride in her family business insulted. "Ollivanders' shape the most powerful magical companion any witch or wizard ever uses. We don't _sell_ them like dried toadstools; we match wands to their perfect mate."

He accepted her correction graciously (or rather, with his tongue stuck out in her general direction), and continued "-Or businessmen like the Greengrasses, the conversion rates from British Muggle to Wizarding money is crucial. They actually don't teach enough foreign history here with the goblins, so during my summers, and I'll bet Ollivander-err, Elisabeth-and Marissa Malkin or Lucius Malfoy too, we all study the different financial dealings between the goblins and every other Wizarding and Muggle nation. Did you know that the Italian Ministry has better conversion rates with the goblins than we do? My family does a lot of business down there and just pays the extra shipping costs to bring items here."

"We do the same with the sorcerers of the 19 Bantu nations in South Africa," added Elisabeth. Nikodemus raised his eyebrow. She shrugged. "They have Baobab branches and Marula twigs for wand materials. Master Gerrick likes to test different woods from around the world to make sure we still sell the best quality wands." Nonchalantly, she continued thoughtfully as she skimmed her schedule. "Current events would be a useful class to have too; the Sherpa of the Himalayas are slaughtering ice dragons due to Muggle encroachment on dragon reserves and the ICW Statute of Secrecy restrictions force them to cull part of their weyr. Master Gerrick has been making a killing on dragon heartstrings for the past month and a half because he noticed the violation before any other wand makers and offered to buy the materials from the keepers. Even got in good with Zacharias O'Toole's dad at the Apothecary for the heads up."

Greengrass looked interested and thoughtful at the tip, obvious thinking of the letter he would have to send to his father the moment he got a chance. "Anyways," he continued after a moment. "It's always changing, so we never really get to ignore international wars or anything since they all affect conversion rates and trade in the region, which eventually cause a ripple here in England."

"Yeah, ok. So who else didn't really understand a word they said? I mean, we're only eleven." grumbled Vivyan. Will and Zoe both nodded while Selina Nott lifted her nose and sniffed- nevermind that she herself hadn't comprehended anything either. Zabini was looking at his hands. Vivyan poked him. "What's going on with you?"

He groaned aloud. "I don't know how I'm ever going to learn how to do all that! My family is one of the main British, Scottish, Irish, and Scandinavian potion ingredients suppliers, but my mum and the trust manager has handled it since my father died when I was a year old. She will until I am of age and she isn't the brightest spark of the wand, if you know what I mean. Who is going to teach me all of that? I didn't even know I needed to know all of that!"

He thumped his head down on the table, disturbing Elisabeth's precariously placed oatmeal. Zoe glared at it as the others chuckled at Zabini's despair, moving the offending food item into the center of the table where it wouldn't hurt anything, especially her newly cleaned robes.

Taking note of the drabbles of upper years leaving the table to return to the Nest for their textbooks, the six of them stood. They left behind Selina Nott and Melina Greengrass, who Flitwick was just handing a schedule to with a warning not to be so late to breakfast again. Following four fifth years Eagles, Vivyan looked over her shoulder to the male Greengrass. "What business is your family in? You didn't mention, just that they are businessmen."

He smirked, blond hair and blue eyes not at all angelic. "We acquire hard to find objects and help dispose of others."

"The Greengrasses like to say they can buy or sell anything- for a price," added Zabini, eying the other boy.

Elisabeth tripped on a stair and Vivyan hauled her up before she bounced to the floor. The spritely girl snapped her fingers as they mounted the third to fourth floor steps, rotating from the south wall to the north one. "I remember! My parents are both Aurors and Mum mentioned a raid on the Greengrass suppliers in Normandy to Dad as the reason she would be out of town for a week."

"Did they?" Nikodemus asked placidly. "I didn't think my parents were using ports that way."

Vivyan gave him an exasperated look, noticing he was coping up to no information. "It was more than two years ago anyways and it's not like I'm going to squeal on you to my parents."

He smiled, angelic looks used to their full extent. "Well, if you happen to overhear anymore of these plans of your parents' trips to other continents, I would love to... Discuss it with you."

Huffing and puffing at the top of the fifth floor stairs, she rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh."

"As you know, the Greengrasses don't have any ties to illegal imports into or exports out of England. We are very respectable citizens." He grinned at the group as he shoved his silky shoulder length hair from his face.

As they continued to walk down the fifth floor corridor, Vivyan leaned over to Elisabeth. She whispered into the littler girl's ear with a grin. "My parents say that the Greengrasses won't do any illegal work in England since that is their primary residence. Instead, they grease up politicians around here so that if-that is, _when-_ they get caught abroad, they seem to be such upstanding citizens to the English Ministry flunkies that can extradite them that they won't even consider handing them over to a foreign Ministry."

She grinned brightly before Elisabeth pointed out something Vivyan hadn't thought about. "No wonder the Greengrasses have been Slytherins and Ravenclaws for generations. The ambition to feed the need for the plan, the creativity and brains to make it, and the cunning to actually take it from theory to reality without it blowing up. Makes sense really."

Vivyan eyed the blond boy as they began the ascent up the spiral staircase to the Ravenclaw Tower, lagging behind the others. "Makes you wonder though, doesn't it? The Hat saw his cleverness over his cunning, but really, what is the difference between the two?"

"Think about it another way, perhaps. It saw his creativity and curiosity over his ambition; not something you can say for most Slytherins with a dark wizard promising riches and power for loyalty in Britain."

 **B1C4-B1C4-B1C4**

The Potions classroom was hard to find. It wasn't until three prefects, six paintings, and a particularly lewd knight in armor, who turned out to be Peeves, had 'helped' them out that the six soaking wet Eagles found the dungeon room. By that time, Elisabeth's clumsiness has resulted in four almost falls and two actual ones, one causing a domino effect as the six had tumbled rather than walked down the steps from the common room. She and Will, her unfortunate landing pillow, both sported spectacular scrapes on their knees. His abnormally long nose also sported a few scratched on it from a meeting with the castle's flagstones.

"Merlin's beard!" exclaimed Will to Vivyan and Elisabeth as the three plopped down at a table together. Zoe sat on Will's other side. "Glad we left early. I don't think we could have gotten more lost if we had tried."

"Bloody pillocks put the common room at the top of the bloody castle. Going to have to buggering get up early to get to this class. What poncing tosser decided that was a good idea to put the bloody thing up there?" grumbled Vivyan as she wrung her hair out onto the floor. Elisabeth copied her friend, her tangled mass producing far more water than Vivyan's tawny hair. She sighed at her friend's naturally tan skin; she was sure that her own pale face was flushed to a tomato red.

Will, Elisabeth, and Zoe all grinned at each other over her head as Greengrass and Zabini sat a row ahead, wringing out their dripping robes. The two boys nodded politely at the two Slytherins sharing their bench. One acknowledged the greeting with only a nod of his own, but the other leaned in. "Wasn't surprised to hear that you were a Ravenclaw, Greengrass. Always smarter than the rest."

Greengrass smirked at the other boy. Gesturing at the others, he introduced them all. "You might recognize Septimus Zabini and Vivyan Scrimegeor from the Greengrass Balls, but I don't think you know Zoe Carmichael, Elisabeth Ollivander, or William Chambers. Elisabeth is Ollivander's apprentice and Chambers is from a minor family of _the_ Chambers. Everyone, this is Dmetri Avery. Our parents often pushed us together when we were in groups. You know how it works," he said with a shrug at the group of Eagles as the rest of the seats in the class filled.

Avery nodded politely to the group, eyeing Zoe whose family hadn't been mentioned before turning back to his partner. Elisabeth could tell that Vivyan was about to ask Greengrass a few more questions, but just then a rotund man entered the room with a chortle.

"Look at you all! So many new faces. Perhaps a few that look familiar- you there, was your sister Macaroy Aimes, the newest face of the Arrows Quidditch team? No? I must have been mistaken. I am Professor Slughorn, Potions Master of Hogwarts, and you must be the first year Ravenclaws and Slytherins. Let's see who all we have here," he said as he pulled a piece of parchment from the desk at the front of the room. It was covered messily in papers, a distinct difference from the meticulously organized storage cabinets around the room or neat brewing area just behind the desk. Elisabeth practically itched to see what bubbled in each cauldron.

"Abbott, Matthias!"

He ran through the class list quickly. "Well, I'm glad to see such a collection of bright scholars here to learn the arts of potion making. Not all of you will be good at it, of course, but over the next five years, we are going to try to help you learn how to make basic potions and how different ingredients react with each other so that my friends Melinda Banckshot, head of the Obliviators, or Glen Cory, another student of mine and an Auror, don't need to come after you for accidentally blowing up a neighborhood. Just to gage where you all are at- Ah, don't look worried there Mr Whitby, I don't expect you to know anything. Just looking for those few who might have had prior training. People like-"

Will leaned over to Vivyan and Elisabeth as the professor continued. "My mum says that Slughorn is a great teacher to anyone, but those he takes special interest in can go really far."

"What do you mean?" whispered back Vivyan from Elisabeth's other side.

"I mean, the man has a lot of connections and can get people to very good positions even if they are Muggleborns."

Elisabeth raised her eyebrows. "Impressive."

"Ehh, I don't believe that. He's a Slytherin," Vivyan said as she rolled her eyes.

"I don't know. That's just what I was told." Will responded neutrally. He paused for a moment then added softly, "Even given the current political climate, I'm sure that not all Slytherins dislike Muggleborns."

Vivyan snorted in disbelief before shrugging and eying the man curiously. "I guess we will find out."

"Ms. Rosier," Professor Slughorn repeated with some force, jerking the three from their conversation into the class lecture. "Would you like to give us your answer?"

The Slytherin girl, who must have been daydreaming, looked up. With a blank face, she apologized. "I'm sorry, Professor, I did not catch the question."

Slughorn made a disappointed noise and turned to the class. Another Slytherin raised his hand to answer the question the three Eagles hadn't even heard. "Yes, Mr. Snape."

"If you combine powered root of asphodel with infusion of wormwood, then you would have a powerful sleeping potion called the Draught of the Living Dead."

"Very good, Mr. Snape. That is a very difficult potion however, so instead we will try our hands with an easier one." Slughorn waved his wand and an instruction set appeared on the board. "This potion will cure boils and is rather simple; few possible explosions and so lets me see how well you can follow instructions. Also, much more fun that spending your first Hogwarts class going over boring rules!" He winked at the class. "We'll get to those for homework and normal lab safety in next class since this one has few truly dangerous parts. Turn to page 12 of your books. Directions are also on the board. Follow the instructions very closely and it should be done within the hour. Good luck."

All the students hurried to pull their texts, ingredients, and cauldrons from their bags. "I'm going to be horrible at this," moaned Vivyan. "Precise direction following not my strong suit."

"Not as bad as I will," muttered Will.

Elisabeth looked at page 12, glanced at her ingredients, then stared at the cauldron. "If I explode something on you two, will you hate me forever?"

They looked at each other, then her. "There is no way you are that bad," Will reasoned. "We've only just begun brewing."

Pressing her lips together, she looked at the ground. "Master Gerrick and I… We discovered that it was best to just ask Mr O'Toole from the Apothecary for help after we exploded the back room. For the sixth time. In four weeks. Mr O'Toole thinks its just an Ollivander thing, because Master Gerrick blows them up more often than I do apparently." Seeing the two look warily at her, she tried to defend her family's pride. "There are certain potions needed in wand crafting that we thought might react better to my magic than his. We were only trying to see if I could get them to work!"

Again, the two exchanged glances. Slowly edging away towards the aisle, Vivyan responded eloquently, "Oh… Well… I mean, I'll still be your friend."

"Me too. That said, I think I may sit a bit more over this way…" Will added as he too moved in the opposite direction toward Zoe, who was leafing through the textbook and ignoring the others.

Left with a large personal bubble and plenty of workspace, Elisabeth began. Even after Professor Slughorn's raised eyebrows and the female Greengrass's snickers at her mixture, she couldn't help but be proud of it. Leaving the dungeons at the end of class, she practically danced around Will, Vivyan, and Zoe who tagged along with them.

"What are you so happy about?" demanded a scowling Vivyan. She had been vehemently upset when Avery had bumped into their table, knocking off all of her ingredients. She had had to prepare them again from scratch and hadn't completed her potion when Slughorn had declared the class over and given them all a foot and a half long essay to write on how they could have brewed their potions better. "Your potion was worse than mine and I didn't even finish it."

"She's right," added Will with a slight frown as they ascended the stairs to the Great Hall and lunch. "Your potion was orange."

"Wasn't the Cure for Boils supposed to be a deep blue in the end?" asked Zoe, who hadn't gotten a look at Elisabeth's cauldron.

"Yes and yes." Still Elisabeth grinned up at them as she stumbled over the foot of a set of armor. "BUT I DIDN'T BLOW ANYTHING UP!"

"What is this? Do my ears deceive me?" asked Florean as he came up alongside them in the Entry Hall. They all stopped just outside of the Great Hall. "An Ollivander not explode a potion? Is this even possible?"

"YES!" Elisabeth couldn't help the huge grin on her face.

"She made an orange Cure for Boils potion." Will added with a raised eyebrow.

Florean stopped grinning at Elisabeth's antics and instead raised his eyebrows bemusedly at the boy then at the girl next to him. "Orange? How in the world did she manage that?"

"I'm really not sure, and we shared a table." Vivyan shrugged. "Professor Slughorn looked surprised too. It didn't melt the pot like the Cure does occasionally if you brew it wrong."

"Yeah, he said he wanted to look at it after class," added Elisabeth. "He put some in in a vial and sent it to his desk."

Florean laughed. "I think he might be reverse engineering it to see what you created, Miss Elisabeth."

"Huh. I wonder what I made then. Think he'll tell me what it does if I ask him next class? Ooh!" She squealed, distracted by her nose but still giddy from her earlier success. Following it into the larger hall, she smiled hopefully at them. "Food time?"

 **B1C4-B1C4-B1C4**

A short introductory lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts followed Lunch. Professor Edmund Marbury was an Auror on leave who was regrowing his left leg under Madame Pomfrey's care. He made it clear that he was a veteran Auror and that teaching children was beneath him but he was bullied into it by his boss and the headmaster. Most of the lesson was spent listening to him gripe about how he didn't know what to do with snot-nosed kids and thus wouldn't coddle them. Anytime a person had a question or whispered to another, they got yelled at until he found a new topic.

"Well, that class will be interesting. My mum told me the original DADA syllabus says first years classes are on hiding from Muggle detection, but I'm not sure I learned anything except that that man is a sullen old codger." muttered Zabini as they exited. Marbury had spent a significant part of the class eyeing him, Nott, and both Greengrasses. "You know, if we had had this class with the Slytherins rather than those Hufflepuffs, I bet he wouldn't have glared at us all class long."

"Hissing hippogriffs, I know!" Nikodemus Greengrass glared back at the classroom. "I understand Nott, but really, Zabini, your family and mine have been neutrals for ages. Bloody prejudiced Auror." All of the first year Ravenclaws turned the corner, walking down the hall to where a painting had told them the Charms classroom would be as he continued, "Bet the Gryffs are going to have a field day when they have him and the Slytherins all in one room in their Defense lesson later this week."

His mutterings continued in the same vein as they plopped their supplies on the desks, himself, Zabini, and Will in the row behind Vivyan, Elisabeth, and Zoe. The six had placed themselves in the middle of the class, while the other boys and girls in Ravenclaw sat loosely around them. Melina Greengrass and Selina Nott had placed themselves in the center of the front row. Vivyan pointed at them. "Think they are trying to suck up to Flitwick?"

"I would." Elisabeth nodded in their direction, continuing, "Melina was late to breakfast, making a bad first impression on the professor on their first meeting. Seems reasonable she would aim to fix that now."

As Zoe struck up a conversation with Alexis Selwyn, Greengrass spared a second to glare at his cousin and her friend, before looking at the empty classroom. "We have this class with the Gryffindors, right? Where are they, do you think?"

Will shrugged, leaning back onto Johnathon Whitby's desk. "We got here fast since the DADA room is so close. Well, today at least; I hear that the charms room switches places every Wednesday for the first two months before settling down. Anyways, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Gryffindors had to come here all the way from the Herbology greenhouses. I doubt we will have to ever worry about finding the best seats in this class."

The others nodded as the first of the Lions came through the door. Vivyan glanced at her for a moment. "She's the one-"

"Yeah," nodded Will. "The one who got slimed our first night here by her housemates. Evitts?"

"Evans," corrected the male Greengrass absentmindedly. They watched the red-head march up to the front of the room and set her stuff right next to Selina Nott. Giving her a huge grin, they heard her ask politely, "Mind if I sit here?"

The five Ravenclaws raised their eyebrows at the Muggleborn's question.

Just as Nott's sneering mouth began to form a few words, a boy's sneering voice rang out from the door. "Of course she doesn't mind, because who wouldn't want to sit next to the pretty, perfect, eventual prefect Lily Evans."

"Shut up, Black," the girl was quick to respond, tossing a glare in his direction. It was clear that her boiling point with him had been reached prior to him even entering the classroom; she exploded at him as the rest of the class filed in. "It's not my fault you got yourself detention right away." Propping her hands on her hips, she turned to face him and the Potter heir who had walked in next to him. Something about the girl rubbed Elisabeth the wrong way; her know-it-all attitude? No, that wasn't it…

"If you hadn't been so mean to Severus, who you don't even know I'd like to point out, then you wouldn't-"

"He's a bloody Slytherin! That makes him- well, a slimy sneaky snake!" sputtered Potter as he and his friend dumped their stuff in the very back row.

Greengrass, Zabini, and Will all rolled their eyes. Under his breath, Greengrass muttered sarcastically, "Bloody creative, Gryffindor. Snakes aren't even slimy."

"He's not like that; Severus is my friend!"

"Good afternoon, class!" came Professor Flitwick's cheery voice as he popped out of a door on the other end of the class. "I heard some noises from my office. Is everything going alright?"

"Fine Professor," responded Evans as she plopped herself next to the two glaring girls in the front row.

"Well then. If you are all here, why don't you take a seat and we can begin the class a few minutes early?" He grinned at the class as he watched the Gryffindors scurry to seats before climbing the pile of books atop his chair to see them over his desk. "My name is Professor Flitwick, as many of you know. I'm the head of Ravenclaw House and the Master of Charms here at Hogwarts. If you ever have any questions, I am free just before and just after each of our classes.

"Now then, here in the Charms class, you will learn what Muggleborns often call 'real' magic. How to make thing float, how to cheer another up temporarily, and how to heat or cool things are some of the many uses for Charms that you will learn this year.

"Now understand, charms will be one of the subjects that you will learn as life goes on; your knowledge will expand every day even after you leave these halls. Unlike Potions, transfiguration, or even Herbology, you will use charms everyday of your life hereafter. Doing the dishes, sending a memo to a coworker, and changing the dial on the Wireless are actions that will become habitual to do with your magic."

Elisabeth noticed Evans feverishly writing everything the professor had said. _Silly. After all, none of that is material that we will be tested on nor is it new knowledge that isn't just plain common sense._ Something about that girl bothered Elisabeth. _Perhaps the almost desperate way she seems to absorb his words? Like they will be snatched from her in a moment. Yes, that's it. She is too… too… Eager, if there is such a thing._

"Excellent!" squeaked the professor, shifting on his tower of books; they seemed to defy gravity by not toppling over. "Now that we know what we use charms for and why you should learn them, I'll teach you your first Charm. Next class I'll teach you about the different categories of charms and we will go over what the plan is to learn this year, but I'd be willing to bet you've had lectures in your earlier classes today and are eager to learn a few spells. So! Let's begin.

" _Colovaria***_ _._ " Suddenly, his blackboard was no longer the dull black most were, but an eye-watering bright green. Another point of his wand, and the chalk changed to black and began to write as he spoke. "Quills and parchment out, if you please, to copy the board. The charm I have just performed is the Colour-Changing Charm. It is used on inanimate objects or animals to change their color. This particular spell doesn't react well when cast on any creature with innate magic, like a witch, wizard, dragon, or veela.

"A feather for each of you." A swish and flick later, the box that had been sitting on Professor Flitwick's desk produced a flurry of feathers. He continued with the lecture as they traversed the classroom, zipping over to each student's desk. "The more control-not more power forced into the spell, but _control_ \- that you have over the magic, the more ease you will have when changing the color. The spell also gives a good sense of how your magic travels from your core, down your wand arm, and then is funneled from your wand, though I don't expect any of you to be able to pinpoint the sensation yet; recognition of the connection between you, your magic, and your wand takes practice, though there are occasional people who have that knack. Our goal today is to get everyone to have the ability to change their feathers into two different colors and feel what magic spells feel like. Note, if you can, the amount of tiredness that you feel; it comes from your magical system after casting the spell. We will practice the movement first, so wands out." A clutter of quills falling over & student scrambling for wands greeted this.

"Simply point your wand at your feather," he demonstrated, waiting for the class to follow his instruction. "Then say the spell. I know it seems silly to practice pointing a wand, but if you please, humor me; we are going to practice our wand grips. Wands up! Now, point. Mister Pettigrew, try not to clutch your wand so hard; it's not going to run off." The professor walked the room, correcting grips.

Elisabeth warily looked about at her classmates, keeping an eye out for Vivyan's enthusiastic thrusting of her wand. It was far too energetic and wild for the tiny girl to disregard it and both she and Zoe paused their own pointing to watch the entertaining sight the auburn haired girl made.

Four dodges and one icy glare at a wand that almost poked her in the eye later, Elisabeth was relieved that the professor returned to the front of the classroom and told them the spell itself, slowly pronouncing it and making them all chant it aloud before setting them free to practice spellcasting for the rest of class.

Elisabeth first watched her classmates for a moment. It was clear who had attempted the spell before, as their attempts had their feather fluctuating colors. Other seemed to try to stare the feathers into submission without success. Sighing at those people, she turned to her own feather after shifting as far from Vivyan as she could.

Elizabeth glanced at her feather for only a moment before looking at her wand. It was Master Gerrick's creation, one he made especially for her upon the arrival of her Hogwarts letter just before her birthday in mid-July. The hornbeam wood was a pale tan, unyielding and solid at exactly 8 and 1/2 inches, which was a rather small wand for any of wizarding kind. The magical component of her wand was a secret to her; Master Gerrick had said that she would have to figure it out herself over time as she became more in tune with her magical companion.

Running small spidery hands over the finish, Elisabeth focused on the inner workings of the wand, remembering from her lessons with Master Gerrick that it was only a focus for her own magic and not an amplifier. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat, blocking out the sounds around her to "see" the connection between herself and the almost sentient object in her hands. It delighted at her magic tugging at it, eager to work and happy with her presence.

In her head, she heard Master Garrick speaking the lecture he had given her a few weeks ago. _Few wizards understand that the wand chooses the wizard in actuality; it is looking for a partner. Well matched second wands are rare to have due to one fact that you have to match primary wand to secondary wand to wizard, with the primary accepting the existence of a secondary and a secondary understanding that frequent use of the primary is its right as first-bonded to the wizard. Silly wand wavers, who think that it is just so easy to get a second after losing or breaking their primary; they will never understand why the second wand will never have as strong a bond to the wizard as the first did. After all, how can you replace a soul mate?_

 _Now, where is that potion O'Toole made us for the alder wood? I'm sure I left it here somewhere…_ her master had said as he lost focus.

Elisabeth shook her head and focused herself on the task at hand. Finding the path her wand encouraged her magic to go through, she shifted her grip to just one hand and practiced one movement, once, twice, then a third time, gently pointing in the direction of the feather, still with her eyes closed. In the background, she heard Professor Flitwick congratulate a Miss Evans on being the first to change the colour of her feather and giving five points to Gryffindor.

One more practice movement, then Elisabeth said the spell while directing the wood at her feather, delighting in the current of magic connecting witch, wand, and feather. She heard Vivyan gasp, but ignored her, eyes still shut as she focused on that magnificent feeling of complete communication with her wand. Both she and the inanimate object worked seamlessly together and as one bond between the pair shifted and settled, she could feel the draw on her magic lessen as her wand tuned to her specifically, pulling less power to produce the same output.

 _Remember_ , Master Gerrick had told her. _Hornbeam wands select life mates and are notorious for only ever working with that one person. With, not for, Miss Elisabeth; they are partners, not tools. I could hear this wand reach for you the moment you stumbled into my shop with that Fortescue boy. It always knew you were the right one. It is on you to actualize that connection. After all, hornbeam adapt more quickly than any other wood to their partner's style of magic and the personalization helps shape the particular sentience that this wand type is known for. Did you know, it makes your code of honor its own? My wand too is hornbeam and won't, for the life of your mother, perform a single cleaning spell, not even for me! I have this thing, you may have noticed, about leaving the poor spiders alone unless I must move them; what right to I have to end their useful lives? I particularly like the one that lives near the cedars. Named him Paul, I did. Turns out he's a she so perhaps Kia-al-Riandi may have been a better name…_

"Er, Elisabeth-" She could hear Vivyan speaking to her and tugging on her robes, but she smiled into the memory. Eyes still closed, Elisabeth continued to ignore the other girl as she shifted thought processes, trying to fine tune that process of magic streaming from her to the wand to the shaped form it exited the wand in. She ignored the feeling of the magic working on the item in front of her in favor of the link from her wandpoint that she could feel; the magic was, after all, still hers even after it had been sent from her core and so she didn't need eyes to see where it went. She could feel a slight nudge from the wand as it seemed to encourage letting the magic flow a certain way.

"Oh my," said a squeaky voice near her shoulder, but Elisabeth was so fascinated she barely heard the words. Twisting the magic a bit and turning the wand a half twist clockwise, she explored how the movement shifted how the shaped magic left the tip. _That's why the wand motion matters; it shifts how the magic is shaped as it exits the wand,_ Elisabeth thought excitedly.

She bounced the wand a time or two just to see what that did, noting how the alternate movement of her arm had lessened the output of power, then slashed the hornbeam wood down and right, only to hear a shriek.

Concentration broken, she felt the magic stop flowing through her system as she opened her eyes. Surprised, Elisabeth saw not only a navy blue coloured feather, but her desk now silver. Looking up slowly, she noted that the robes and chair of Gryffindor Andrew Hooper directly in front of her were respectively orange and aquamarine. She followed the line of where her wand had slashed down and right only a moment ago, seeing bags dyed pink, desks turned electric blue, and a variety of robes, hair, and chairs in any number of other colors.

"Very good, Miss Elisabeth!" cried her Head of House; she noted the use of her first name approvingly. _Perhaps Will or Viviyan told him?_ She thought as he continued. "Quite impressive!"

She looked the teacher to confirm her guess. Quietly she looked at the mess of colors. Under her breath she muttered, slightly pleased, to herself. "I did that, didn't I?"

The professor, Zoe, and Vivyan all grinned. Before any could speak though, a slightly cross but mostly curious voice came from green haired Evans in rusted orange robes. "You magicked the whole room rather than the feather."

"Yes, I can see that," Irritated for some reason at the normally red-headed girl, Elisabeth wondered why the girl felt the need to say the obvious after it had already been stated by both herself and the professor. _Perhaps the same reason Evans had earlier seen fit to take notes on information that needn't be written to be remembered?_

"It seems that you, Miss Elisabeth, have some incredible power control!" remarked the professor with enthusiasm. "Five points to Ravenclaw! You must have been practicing at home. "

She shook her head. "Master Ollivander says the shop is enough mess without another silly wand waver waving her wand about."

"Well done then! Do you know why you continued to color everything in the path of your wand tip?" he asked. She shook her head in the negative, interested in a reason for the spell's outcome. Her stunt having caught the attention of most of the class, he only had to call Potter and Black to attention before he continued. "Miss Elisabeth here has shown what I wasn't expecting to get to today in class. Can you describe the magic flow you felt?"

She nodded, explaining that she could feel the flow from core to arm to wand.

Flitwick practically bounced as he walked to the front of the room. Tapping the chalk again, it started to sprint, leaving words in its wake. "Note that she unintentionally continued to let the power flow from core to wand continually, whereas most of us simply feel the magic spring up during the spell construction and direct it with wand movements in a short burst of power. That is why myself or Miss Evans colour the feather singularly and not everything we point our wands at. It is normal for most wizards to work magic this way."

"Does that mean that Ollivander is abnormal then, sir? A weirdo?" came a teasing voice from the back. Potter made a funny face at Elisabeth as she turned on her seat. Vivyan and Will both frowned at the boy that none of the three knew very well, certainly not well enough to make a joke like that with.

Zabini leaned back in his chair, banging into the desk behind him. The motion seemed to accidentally upset the precariously balanced inkwell in front of Potter, quickly soaking the boy's notes as he cried out. Flitwick frowned at the two boys as Zabini shrugged. "Oops."

"You conniving sister of a snake!" growled Potter as he started to raise his wand. Zabini only raised an eyebrow.

"Really Mr Potter," sighed the professor. "It was merely an accident. Two points from Gryffindor for drawing your wand at another student. To address your previous comment, Miss Elisabeth is not abnormal, just different. I'm guessing that as an Ollivander, she has a slightly higher sensitivity to magical pathways and so didn't see the overall picture of the spell as we did, but rather focused on the minutiae of the magic's path instead."

Evans's hand shot up from the front row. Without waiting to be called on, she blurted out. "Sir, why does her family matter?"

"Different families have tendencies towards particular magical fields, cultivated by family spells and certain attitudes they are brought up with." He waved her again raised hand down, telling her that if she had more questions on that matter he could see her after class, and set the rest of the class to work again, heading over to help Frank Longbottom with his spell.

"That was awesome, Elisabeth!" said Will from the row behind her. She and Vivyan turned around to face the three boys.

"Yeah," Greengrass grinned at her. "But next time, aim. On a totally unrelated note, my absolutely lovely cousin, sitting right next to that red-head, hates the color puce. You know, in case your aim is ever off again."

They all eyed him with a question that Septimus Zabini verbalized for them. "Isn't she, you know, family? And you want Elisabeth to _aim_ for her? I mean, mis-aim for her?"

"I'm not so much a fan of bigots," the other boy responded, his tone flippant. Then he scowled. "And I really, really don't like her. I'm not saying cast a curse at her, but pulling her down a few rungs to the level of us other mortals won't do her any harm."

They all gave him another strange look as Flitwick bustled over to the group, breaking up their chat. He watched each of the boys practice the spell before asking Elisabeth to cast again. "But this time, see if you can't sever the connection right away, rather than letting it go on."

Possessively, she clutched her wand. "I'm not cutting the connection between it and I! We only just bonded as primaries!"

Both he and her friends blinked at her a moment. Vivyan asked, "Primaries?"

"The connection from a first wand to its first witch. It's like a claim from me to it and it to I." Looking at the professor, she held her wand more protectively as an unreasoning fear welled up in her, just like the moment her brother had pushed her into the fireplace to the Leaky Cauldron, that _look_ on his face, that look and she _knew_ she'd never see him again- _No, not this, not now, not the same at all_. She hunched down a bit more anyways as she muttered to the teacher quietly. "Besides, it's hornbeam. It's notorious for adapting to its owner's style of magic and person. Most never allow a second wand to lay claim to their wizard and none has ever accept a second wizard after they are forced to leave their first. It won't like you. You can't have it."

"Ah!" The professor smiled at her reassuringly now that he understood the issue. "Not to worry, Miss Elisabeth. I should have clarified that I want you to sever the bond of the magic leaving your core from your core itself, just as you did unconsciously when you lost your concentration the last time. I won't take your wand from you; no teacher is allowed to take a wand from a student unless the charges are very severe, so you needn't be concerned over that."

"They only take wands from criminals. Even though they take your wand when you enter the Ministry, they never hold onto it for more than the time it takes to weigh and record it," Vivyan comforted the other littler girl who still seemed inordinately concerned over the potential loss of her wand.

With another nod from the teacher, Elisabeth performed the spell, this time keeping her eyes open and wand aimed at the appropriate target. A quick burst of magic later and her feather had changed from navy to bronze.

"Well done, well done indeed!" squealed Flitwick, winking at her as he noticed the Ravenclaw theme of her feather. As he began to wander off towards Selina Nott, whose feather was inexplicably burning, he added, "I get the feeling that under your tutelage, Miss Elisabeth, I'm going to learn more about wands than I had previously known. I look forward to it!"

Class ended not long after. As the group packed up quills, inkpots, and notes, Elisabeth watched her unfortunate classmates be returned to their original color from misaimed spells, her own and others. In particular, the four Gryffindor boys in the rear of the room were particularly colourful. Professor Flitwick shouted out to the students as they walked off that he wanted a half foot of parchment on why hair could be changed by the spell when skin was only barely tinted.

Together the five walked out, leaving Zoe to chat with Alexis Selwyn, the Ravenclaw who was a distant cousin of the Gryffindor first year Alice Selwyn, and followed Black and Potter out the door.

They hadn't gotten far before a yell stopped them. "Elisabeth, Nikodemus, wait!"

It was Evans.

"I guess no one has yet taught her anything about wizard manners," grumbled Greengrass, who seemed to have taken a dislike to this particular girl already, just as Elisabeth herself had. Will elbowed him as she got closer. Greengrass, who rarely showed bad manners, kept in form, smiling thinly at the Gryffindor as she drew closer.

"Yes?" asked Vivyan. Energy pent up from sitting in classes all day, she was dancing from foot to foot.

"Professor Flitwick was busy with changing students into their proper colors, so he couldn't talk to me after class. I have a question." She paused only briefly, then words tumbled out, directed at Elisabeth. "Earlier Flitwick mentioned that you have family magic that is taught from one generation to the other and I just wanted to know how that works."

"It's a secret, Evans," drawled Greengrass, a smile of polite disinterest and boredom still painted on his angelic face. "That's why it is family magic. Why would Elisabeth tell you?"

"Stop being such a tosser, Greengrass." Black thrust himself into the conversation unexpectedly. Looking at Greengrass, he motioned Evans away. "Careful of that one. His family isn't so friendly."

"Isn't your family known for their particularly violent brand of offensive spells? Dark, heavy, and shooting fast from wand to target I think are the particulars of most Black spells." Greengrass raised his brow.

Black sputtered that he wasn't like them and Evans ignored the Greengrass as she turned on Black. "Isn't that awfully unfair though?" She demanded. "Spells should be open for all so that muggleborns like me can have access too."

The five Eagles and two Lions both looked at her in astonishment.

"Really, it is! Just because you all have magical parents means that you don't even realize how much ahead of people like me you are. You just take it for granted! Well, I'm going to change that someday and make it so that all people can do all spells."

The others others gaped at her, though the now still Vivyan was able to speak up a bit. "But... Not everyone can do every spell…"

"Yes, I know, because not every spell is taught to every person. Everyone can cast a spell if they were just taught how!" Evans's eyes seemed to be lit with an inner fire. "Magical blood doesn't determine what magic a person can do because all magic is the same and so every person is only then limited by the amount they have access to. So maybe not every person can do the spells needing a lot of power, but they should still be able to know what they are. Don't you think, William?"

Will just blinked blankly at the red-head who casually used his given name, still trying to compute her words and make sense of them.

"No," spoke up Elisabeth with a confused frown. She rather bluntly continued, a bit peeved that this know-nothing girl was demanding access to family grimoires. "Only an Ollivander, Gregorvitch, and three or four other families can make wands. It's not just a matter of knowing the process, it's how your magic reacts to the materials."

"I don't believe you," Evans glared at the shorter girl. "If your taught people, maybe another could learn how to… to make their magic react the right way."

"Truth doesn't care if you believe me. It's not a matter of fairness about muggleborns not knowing spells." Frustrated the other girl wasn't understanding _anything,_ Elisabeth spoke without thinking, repeating an oft heard saying from her parents. "They tend to mess up bloodlines anyways."

Now Evans turned redder and redder. "I thought that a smart Ravenclaw wouldn't be so stupid!" she huffed before turning and beginning to walk away. "I am going to prove you wrong, everyone of you. And you, Elisabeth Ollivander, I'm going to beat you in every class until graduation to prove that I, with my non-magical background, am a better witch than you! Mess up bloodlines, will I?! I'm going to make any family want me over you!"

The group watched her stomp off, all a little shocked. Elisabeth contemplated banging her head against the wall, but her shyer nature wouldn't let her make such a spectacle of herself in front of the others.

"Well," mumbled Vivyan. "That could have gone better."

Zabini nodded even as Greengrass pursed his lips at the disappearing red-head, but Will spoke up as he gave Elisabeth a reproving look. "Saying they tend to mess up bloodlines is pretty harsh though."

"I dunno. It's accurate." Surprisingly, it was Potter who spoke. He reddened under the astonished look Black gave him. "Not that us Potters care at all; we've got several of us married to Muggleborn. But Muggleborn don't have refined cores, they're wild magic in a person. Like, I don't know, the Winters? They have a tendency to plant related spells and professions. Part of that is just how they are brought up, with so many green things growing around home, always comparing things to plants, and most people encouraging them to learn in that direction, but a small bit of that is that their actual core is shaped over generations to respond in certain ways to certain plants; did you know that their magic protects them from infant Mandrake cries? I've seen it. Anyways, when Maryanne Winters married a Muggleborn a few years before my parents were married, their son was born without any of the markers that the Winter kids are known for and didn't have the tendencies the rest had. Instead, he was like his dad and could choose where he wanted to specialize. Freeing in some ways I guess, but all those family spells that he never had as high a proficiency for were a struggle for him."

"Mmmm, that's what happened when Hendrick Gregorvitch married one; the kid had to find a new profession because he couldn't touch a wand that shared either his core or wood without it trying him for compatibility and partnership and ended up contaminating a whole store's worth of wands." Elisabeth nodded in agreement with the Potter boy.

"I didn't know that," Will told the group, eyebrow furrowed. "I mean, it makes sense in hindsight since every Chambers I've met is pretty good as Shielding, but… Doesn't that make her right? It is rather unfair for the muggleborns."

Elisabeth and Potter both shrugged. "I don't think so," Elisabeth responded quietly. "I mean, I was chosen at age five to learn the art of wand-crafting. Most people in my family are pretty good with items that channel magic and so are drawn to it as a career. Muggleborns get to choose whatever to focus on, no push to follow a certain path. Don't get me wrong, I know an Ollivander in Dragon Keeping, but it's not as easy for him as it could be since his core doesn't naturally push magic the way it needs to for that job. A muggleborn could be anything. No magic formation issues…"

"No family pressures to any particular type of magic," added Black with a scowl.

"I would say they are pretty lucky really," added Potter. "I'd love to get to choose to be anything rather than knowing that my core itself will force me to work to change how I process magic if I wanted to do something like Healing."

"That said," As Zabini spoke for the first time in the group, Elisabeth couldn't help noticing that he seemed shyer in front of the non-Eagles. "There are certain spells that families keep close that anyone could do. They are kept secret so that enemies can't use them against you."

"Yeah," sighed Greengrass windily. He was done with the conversation and ready for dinner. "But for every one of those spells my family might have, we have a few others that take a non-Greengrass more power, or at least cause some amount of extra difficulty, to perform. That is, if they work at all. When you think about it, we are literally conditioned from the time we are born to perform those particular spells, even if we don't actually start performing them until we are older. Just like you have to want to cause pain to cast the Cruciatus Curse and your magic responds in the appropriate path to do so, family spells take a particular thought process to come out right. I've never seen anyone spit out a Bone Splitting Curse like Acturus Black did in the dueling finals last year, because it began as a Black spell even though everyone knows the incantation and movements now."

"It might have begun a security thing, I suppose," Potter continued soberly. "It isn't really anymore. I guess I understand why…" her trailed off with a frown. Elisabeth guessed the boy was connecting dots about the Death Eaters and their mission and not liking that he understood why they did what they did, attacking Muggleborns as they did.

Black, who had stood bored among them since he had determined his new friend wasn't a blood purist, heard his stomach begin to grumble for food. Unashamed of the noises, he grinned and poked Potter. "Dinner?"

"Dinner. Oh, and Zabini?" The painfully quiet dark skinned boy looked at the bespectacled one, eyebrow raised in askance. "This is for completely ruining my notes in class. _Colovaria!_ "

The two Gryffindors ran down the hallway as Zabini's hair turned Gryffindor red, laughing as they made their getaway. Poor Zabini grimaced as he realized he hadn't a clue how to remove the spell and was stuck with it until it wore off or an upper year took pity on him and removed it. He glared at their disappearing figures.

"Well then," grinned Will suddenly. "It seems that Elisabeth unintentionally got herself a sworn enemy and that Potter and Black just found themselves an entire group of Ravenclaws who now have motivation to research prank spells."

Zabini smiled gratefully at the pudgy boy as the others giggled. "Well in that case, since you volunteered to help research my revenge," The boy extended his hand to Will. "I think I'd be pleased to call you all my friends. Call me Septimus."

The two shook hands while Greengrass shrugged and addressed the group as well. "I'm Nikodemus then, I suppose."

"Brilliant," yelled Vivyan happily. "That'll make it much less confusing when I complain about your cousin's horrific snoring habits in our dorm."

The five grinned at each other, pleased to have earned a few more friends on only their first full day together. And the added benefit of prank study partners as well!

As they tromped down the stairs behind the Terrible Two, Will hung back next to Elisabeth. "Sorry."

She glanced up into his pale green eyes, confused.

"I'm the oldest of five, so when you said that back there, about them messing up bloodlines, my older brother took over. I didn't really have any place to reprimand you." He smiled apologetically at her.

She stared at the ground, attempting not to trip into him again as she thought about her response. She shrugged mutely, mentions of siblings making her bad memories resurface.

"My mom left us, you know," he added abruptly they turned after the others into another hall. She looked up as he grinned sheepishly. "I just wanted to explain. My dad works over in the Department of Mysteries so I take care of all of them along with a rotation of older cousins; Dad conscripts whoever is free. So I play parent to them and the 'no, don't do/say/eat that' instinct is pretty strong in me."

"Ah," she said woodenly. The talk about family, it _hurt_. After almost five months, shouldn't it at least hurt less?

When Vivyan called back to the two, urging them impatiently to "Keep up! And for Merlin's sake, please explain to these two Niffler brains why the Monrose Magpies are nothing next to the Harpies?!" Elisabeth hurriedly stumbled ahead of the longer legged Will, thankful for the distraction.

"I will have you know that I am a firm supporter of the Magpies because-" Nikodemus began and Will and Elisabeth raced to catch up.

"I don't care that Blagherty, their seeker, is the best in the league; their tactics could be improved upon by giants-" Vivyan started in on him only momentarily as Will grinned and interrupted.

"We all know the Chudley Cannons-"

"Not the Cannons-"

"I thought you were just joking about then in the main hall! I didn't realize that you were serious-"

"I never joke about the Cannons." Will frowned, actually offended at the questioning of his Quidditch beliefs. "I'll have you know that their beaters-"

The conversation quickly devolved into a flurry of terms that Elisabeth had no interest of attempting to decipher. As the argument got more heated, she found herself at leading the group with Septimus. As he asked a portrait of some obscure world leader directions to the Great Hall, she eyed him curiously. "You barely spoke before, with Potter and Black."

He flushed under dark skin, not speaking. She bumped into him as a protruding flagstone tripped her up and the other boy jumped out of her way, checking himself where they had made contact. He was now white under his dark features. He offered her a courteous hand up, dropping it as soon as was polite.

Roughly, he walked on, leaving her with the Quidditch arguing trio. _Now that's a boy_ , she thought as she walked on. _One who clearly has something bad in his past just like I do. I wonder what…_

 **A/N: No, there will not be a prank war between them and the early Marauders; I'm trying to stick to cannon and so I'm not setting up a prank competition. The library study in pranks will lead to something else I have planned later.**

 ***Yes, Florean did trick that poor second year into leading him to the Slytherin Common Room. That poor boy has yet to recover from the inevitable teasing that a "great galumphing Hufflepuff" was smarter than he. The other Slytherins, though surprised, know that Florean wouldn't tell a soul as to its location, but that didn't stop a few from cornering him and making clear that certain** _ **results**_ **would come out of any situation where he did. Florean grinned at them, turned two people's hair blue and another one's shoes into Muggle clown shoes, twinkled his fingers at them and exited into the Potions classroom where Slughorn gave detention to those who entered the class with their wands raised. They didn't notice until later that their ties had been polka dotted black and yellow until dinner that evening. But that's a story for another time.**

 **** The price of gold in 1971 was 40.62 USD, while in 1991 it's 362.91 USD. For bronze/copper, the 1971 cost was .52 USD and in 1991 it cost 1.25 USD. Accounting for the fact that gold and copper prices are based on the amount available, and that hpwiki said 1991-1998 conversion was 1 galleon to 24.60 pounds (48.22 USD), the conversion for a galleon in 1971 would be 5.40 USD or 2.75 pounds (or 18.15 USD and 10.58 pounds in 1991). So really, as time goes on, the Muggles are getting cheated because their system isn't gold-based whereas the Wizarding one is.**

 ***** The color changing spell is canon, first mentioned in OOTP during the OWLS by Harry. Since the OWLS tests the cumulative knowledge from all five years prior and this seemed like a simple spell, I am making it the first spell this group really learns.**


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